Re: Choice of languages

[Sam Steingold <sds goems com>]

>>>> In message <199905191606.MAA04192@mail.redhat.com>
>>>> On the subject of "Re: Choice of languages"
>>>> Sent on Wed, 19 May 1999 17:05:55 +0100
>>>> Honorable Michael ROGERS <M.Rogers@cs.ucl.ac.uk> writes:
 >> > >> Why choose C, and not C++?
 >> >
 >> >because C is a good assembly language, while C++ is a monster.
 >> 
 >>  This doesn't explain why C was used for Gnome - hardly an assembly
 >> language project.

it answers a more general question - why people choose C over C++.

 >>  To quote from your own web page, "eventually C was used to write
 >> large programs (word processors, computer algebra systems,
 >> computer-aided design systems, etc). C is a totally inappropriate
 >> language for large projects: it lacks all the aspects of a
 >> high-level language, which means that the programmer has to design a
 >> work-around for all of them".

the next sentence: "C++ is a slight improvement in some areas, but only
a slight, and at a great cost of enormous complexity."

 >>  Surely by these criteria C++ is more suitable for application
 >> programming than C?

C++ is suitable for only for Obfuscated Code Contests.
C is suitable for small utilities.

Seriously though, the enormous mess that C++ is makes it very hard to
write a good compiler.  I would be very wary of using C++ for a large
project which would be compiled by different compilers on different
platforms.  You never know what bug in which compiler you will uncover
with the next "cool feature".

-- 
Sam Steingold (http://www.goems.com/~sds) running RedHat6.0 GNU/Linux
Micros**t is not the answer.  Micros**t is a question, and the answer is Linux,
(http://www.linux.org) the choice of the GNU (http://www.gnu.org) generation.
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