Re: C++ & gnome (was: Re: opening Gnome to multiple (windowing) systems)

[Bruce McDonald <bruce triphop dyn ml org>]

This is my last comment on this thread...

On Thu, 9 Apr 1998, George wrote:

>as a person who has used templates and STL for a large project that went
>down the tubes .... if I were to do a big program in C++ there would be
>4 rules:
>
>1) no templates
>2) no STL
>3) no multiple inheritance
>4) no reference variables

Well as a person who has worked on projects using just these technologies
I would recommmend them.  However given the sophistication of some of
these technologies the "minimum-wage" coder is not recommended.
Admittedly these things can be remarkably subtle and can confuse the VB
level coder.  They are power tools, just like 'rm -rf /', and novices can
get hurt.

>just because all of these will make life hell once stuff starts to go wrong
>or specs start to change for your program 

It sounds like the project failed due to lack of management and not
necessarily due to technology.  All it takes is for the project management
to say no to the clients - "That feature will be in the next version".

>it seems far easier to me to put a nice OO rfamework down for C and then
>use it ... (such as the gtk object model) .... starting an OO project
>with all teh OO bells and whistles is not as easy in C as in C++ ... but
>once you have the OO framework down ... writing new objects that use
>that is usually quite trivial, lot more times mroe trivial then in C++

I really don't understand why design an OO library in a non-OO language -
you have to do all the leg work that a modern language does for you.  Plus
you lose encapsulation which, to me, is a big loss.  As for your assertion
that implementing new objects is (lot more) trivial than C++, well that
kind of statement works better when your waving arms are seen in action ;) 

>plus C seems to be much more managable in large projects ...as I have
>discovered that the hyped C++ reusability just doesn't exist ....

Reusability, C++ or whatever, is a hard goal to achieve.  Thats why I
did't mention it.  Reuse requires a special design effort and is
achievable (SF frameworks, Qt, GTK, ET++, OCL and more) in whatever
language.

>George

Bruce.