🚀 go-pugleaf

norwood@lanl.gov (Zachary Norwood) writes:

>In article <31017267.37BACA29@mindspring.com>, Damir Smitlener
><damir@mindspring.com> wrote:

>A quote from MacTech: "Q: How easy is it to go from c/c++ to Java? A: It
>is very easy. [...] And, from our perspective, Java provides
>most of the power of C++ with none of the pain. This was achieved by
>avoiding those "features" of C++ which, while providing tremendous power
>for those "in the know," are a source of tremendous complexity and
>befuddlement for most programmers. 

Gosh, isn't it nice of those Java designer to not confuse us with advanced
and powerful features? 

Gosh, I hate this "we have to protect you from yourself, thus we won't
give you access to anything with enough power to really screw up. Everybody
likes it nice and easy" nonsense. It's what brought us HTML when we already
had TeX and SGML, and it is what brought us Windows95's interface  when 
Windows 3.1 was already plush fluff candy. 

Now they design an object oriented language. That's OK. But either, you
do it in the tradition of Smalltalk (at which time, comparing it to C++
becomes meaningless), or you do it in the tradition of C++. But if you 
decide to go C++, then PLEASE don't remove what makes C++ a powerful
language (hint: it''s not the object oriented part :-).

The other thing is that they reinvent the p-System from the 80s. Anybody
want to take a bet that, by the year 2000, JAVA is either dead or has had
pointers and multiple inheritance added to it, as an afterthought, of course,
and thus badly?

>In particualar there are two potential
>pitfalls in C++ that Java avoids: raw pointers and multiple inheritance.
>In place of pointers, Java provides true type-safe arrays and strings, as
>well as runtime type-checked dynamic casting."

"type safe arrays" in the pace of pointers? Oh my.... But from all I read,
performance has never been a prime target for JAVA, so doing all that ugly
array-juggling instead of a little, fast, and easy pointer arithmetic will
probably not matter all that much.

But really --- it's not as if C++ _forces_ you to use pointers and multiple
inheritance. Nope, anybody who uses it (or them) does so for a reason.
Now the reason might not be good, but simply ASSUMING that there is no good
reason is arrogance.

>In other words... if you know how to program in C you can use Java...

Nonsense. If you can program C, you know nothing about object orientedness
(and probably a lot about pointers :-). If you know C++, you have a certain
chance to make an easy transition, but I wouldn't put my money on it.

Bernie
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