🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <46giru$r6a@natasha.rmii.com>,
Colin James III (The Rt Rev'd) <cjames@cec-services.com> wrote:
>
>How horrible:  all the positions are for C++ (with some Smalltalk?),
>which means the resulting products shall be:
>
>1.  Unportable to many, many platforms;

What on earth are you smoking?

C and C++ are probably the most commonly available languages, and
if the person writes POSIX compliant ANSI-C and draft ANSI-C++
portability is _not_ a problem.  The same code should compile
on damn near every Unix, DOS, Windows-NT, OS-2, et al system.

Ever hear of GNU?  That's hardly an "unportable" system, yet it
contains some of the most complex software most people will ever
compile on their system.

>2.  Poorly documented (it is very difficult for management to enforce
>quality documentation by C++ programmers);

Yeah, right.  Then either the programmers, or more likely, the
managers, should be fired.

Guess what: at my shop all of the senior C++ programmers have been
pleading for time to work on documentation, but it's management which
keeps demanding we stop "wasting time" on the documentation and add
yet another feature instead.

>3.  Unmaintainable because C++ (and Smalltalk) is not inherently
>strongly typed and hence allows legion side-effects;  and

Yeah, right.  C++ is one of the strongest typed languages in
common use.

I would even rank C++ as stronger typed than Ada because C and C++
require explicit casts; in Ada the programmers facing the same
situation are forced to use little-known backdoors in the language
to achieve the same effect.

(Yes, there are cases where the equivalents of casts are required
in Ada.  Take a close look at RW file I/O sometime.)

I'll grant that casts can be abused, but competent management will
prevent this from happening.  Once again the blame belongs on
_management_, not the language, if the feature is abused.

>4.  Very difficult to change or test for all the reasons above and
>because neither C++ (nor Smalltalk) have inherent exception handling.

Try crawling out from under your rock.  Exceptions were possible
in C, although a bit of a pain to use.  (Look up setjump/longjump
some time.)

C++ actually defines explicit exception handling which puts Ada to
shame.  Most implementations can't handle some of the most bizarre
exception statements (because of questions re: destructors and the
like), but almost all C++ developers currently avoid that type of
construction.

Sorry for having a C++ discussion on sci.crypt, but these statement
are so outrageous that they can't go uncommented.  In fact, many of
us would have serious doubts about any new software effort which
_didn't_ use C++.

In fact, these statements are enough that I'm going to jot down
"CEC Services, Lakewood, CO" for future reference.  If the 
"principal scientist" there is this ill-informed, I want to stay
far away from its products!

-- 
Bear Giles                     For every complex problem there is an
bear@cs.colorado.edu           answer that is clear, simple and wrong.
copyright 1995                                         -- H L Mencken