Re: [gtkmm] Probably a stupid Gtk+ question

[Julian Missig <julian jabber org>]

On 9 Jan, 2004, at 6:50, Carl Nygard wrote:

> Like I said, this is probably stupid.  I've had this question rattling
> around in my skull for a while, and instead of actually researching it,
> I'm taking the easy way out and just asking:
>
> If Gtk+ is built on an object model, why did those folks go to such
> (rumored to be) herculean lengths to build one in C, instead of just
> using C++?  I can think perhaps language bindings had something to do,
> but the only problem that jumps out there would be scheme/lisp binding.
> Perl/python/ruby are already OO themselves.
>
> I'm sure theres a good reason, just curious... and not looking to start
> a language war.

C++ has a history of particularly poor support on Linux. C has been the 
favored language for development on Linux for a long time. g++ had poor 
support for STL and has always been rather slow to compile C++. Not to 
mention the fact that ABI compatibility was broken with every g++ 
release and that different architectures supported different parts of 
STL!

So basically, when Gtk+ started, C++ was a rather poor choice if you 
wanted to build a well-supported cross-architecture library. And yes, 
language bindings are another part of the argument. Supposedly it's 
much easier to make language bindings to various other languages if the 
core library is in C than if it were in C++. Also, a lot of the Gtk+ 
and/or Gnome developers feel that C++ is a crummy language and it makes 
more sense to build the OO features they need into C. Or something like 
that.

Julian