Re: C++

[Preston Brown <pbrown econ yale edu>]

On Thu, 9 Apr 1998, Miguel de Icaza wrote:

> I am interested in knowing what C++ does that we can not duplicate.  

You can duplicate anything C++ does in C.  cfront, the original C++
implementation, was just a massive pre-processor for the C compiler.  And
the turing problem says they are equivalent, but let's not get into that.
:)

The thing that C cannot duplicate that C++ has, as well as smalltalk,
Objective-C, and other OO languages, is the simplicity and elegance of
object oriented design, particularly inheritance.  Yes, I know you can
simulate it, but it's just not quite as elegant a solution. 

Some will argue that C++ is needlessly complex and allows you to pervert
OO programming.  I might counter that C allows you to do the same thing to
regular structured programming.  BOTH are powerful languages with a great
deal of flexibility.  Both have their places.  Neither one is God.  A good
programmer learns several languages and knows where each has it's place.

There, my piece as a computer scientist has been said.
 
---
 -Preston Brown
  preston.brown@yale.edu
  Yale CS 1998