🚀 go-pugleaf

bear@tigger.cs.colorado.edu (Bear Giles) wrote with possible
deletions:

| 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.
|                                    -- H L Mencken

The problem is that nobody cares about your misinformed opinion
"Bear".  Note that the copyright notice on your message is gone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Colin James III, Principal Scientist  cjames@cec-services.com
CEC Services, 2080 Kipling St, Lakewood, CO  80215-1502   USA
Voice: 303.231.9437;  Facsimile: .231.9438;  Data:  .231.9434  
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