Re: next ISO/ANSI standard for C++

From: Sharad Kala (no.spam_sharadk_ind_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 02/11/04 

Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2004 22:16:15 +0530

"Victor Bazarov" <v.Abazarov@comAcast.net> wrote in message
news:xtsWb.7733$uV3.18367@attbi_s51...
> "Sharad Kala" <no.spam_sharadk_ind@yahoo.com> wrote...
> >
> > > I don't mean this deprecatingly, but the you both seem to be new to C++
> and
> > > unaware of the underlying philosophy of the language. C++, like C, takes
> a
> > > minimalist approach to language features and standard libraries, which
> is what
> > > has allowed C and C++ to be so easily ported to a large number of vastly
> > > different platforms. Let's look at your wish list point by point:
> >
> > Don't want to sound cheeky, cocky or start a flame war but seems like you
> think
> > you are expert enough to judge other people. I personally think one should
> > refrain from it unless you like to argue much.
>
> Everybody is allowed to judge other people, and one doesn't have to be
> an expert to do that (at least according to my experience). This is
> a public forum and I personally think one should refrain from telling
> others what they should refrain from (although I don't always follow
> my own advice either).

I never asked anyone not to refrain. I cannot stop anyone as you correctly
pointed out it's a public forum.
I just said that "I personally think...". I just told that one should be careful
enough while making statements
if one wants to have healthy discussions rather than ego-clashes.

> > Most of the projects I have worked on have required XML somewhere or the
> other.
>
> So what? Out of twenty-plus years I've been programming, only about
> two years total I did some work involving XML. Doesn't at all speak
> to XML widespread-ness, but mostly to the length of one's career, no?

XML has become popular only in recent years.
I may be near about your half age and cannot claim to say that this has been in
use for 20 yrs. But in the recent times XML has become an important form of data
exchange. There are even industry-wide protocols that are entirely XML based.
Atleast it has so happened that I have had to deal with XML in all my projects.

> > You need to resort to 3rd party libraries like Xerces/MSXML etc and their
> > intricacies each time you switch to a new library.
> > Wouldn't be good if there was a standard way to write the code and it
> would have
> > been portable too.
>
> No, it wouldn't. Just like it wouldn't to have some kind of networking
> or GUI capability.

Getting offtopic..Just the other day I helped someone with Xerces because it has
peculiarity with treating whitespaces as text nodes.
There is a transcode API that allocates memory and expects user to free it.
Point is there are so many intracacies in handling with these
3rd party libraries.

> > I know writing programs involving threads in a standard way is tricky,
> owing to
> > OS differences.
> > But now that most of the major projects require threads somewhere
>
> Got any statistics about that?
Nope.

> > or the other
> > and then you include #ifdefs for your platform in your code because your
> product
> > runs on various platforms. Wouldn't it be good to just provide a standard
> way of
> > making the calls and let the compiler decide what to do under the hood?
>
> No. The more the compiler has to decide, the less probable it is to
> have a decent compiler or a compiler that satisfies enough people for
> it to be a viable product. By the time such compiler comes out, the
> language will have died.

Agreed. As I said earlier too that writing thread code in a standard way would
be tricky. Thread started with what *would* be good to have in a standard
library.
But I do agree that it's a lot of work for compiler vendors.Don't think though
it's the case with XML though.

> > Though I agree with you that the minimalist approach has made C and C++ to
> be
> > easily portable across platforms and extending the library would require
> more
> > work to be done by our compiler vendors. I have been reading about the
> > possibilities of library getting extended for quite some time and just
> voiced
> > what I felt would make life of a developer to concentrate more on standard
> ways
> > rather than deal with 3rd party or OS intricacies.
>
> Please voice it in comp.std.c++ and see what kind of reaction you get.
>
> "OS intricacies" are not going away any time soon, and are becoming more
> and more numerous every year. How do you really expect language creators
> to follow those and integrate them into the language? And (for the sake
> of argument) if the Committee does catch up with OS changes and other new
> technologies (like XML) popping up here and there, you would also need
> compiler developers to catch up, and they cannot do it without the language
> being fully defined.
>
> The only way to standardise C++ way of treating things like network, GUI,
> XML, threads, OS-specific stuff, etc., is to make them standard as well.
> How long will that take and how rigid will they become?

I see your point and do agree to many extents with even what Claudio has to say.
Let me clearify here. I just meant it would have been good had there been
standard ways
to do things. Never meaning that it *should* be the case or that there are no
issues with extending the library.