Re: [gtkmm] Probably a stupid Gtk+ question

[Billy O'Connor <billyoc gnuyork org>]

Gerald Henriksen <ghenriks rogers com> writes:

> On Fri, 09 Jan 2004 06:50:30 -0500, you wrote:
>
>>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,
>
> Gtk+ is quite old and C++ compiler support back then was a nightmare
> as each compiler vendor implemented different parts of the standard at
> any given time.  Thus any cross-platform code in C++ quickly either
> became a mess of compiler specific code or you had to code to a very
> poor lowest common denominator version of C++.  C++ compilers also had
> a reputation for producing bloated, slow code compared to C.
>
> It is only recently that all the major compilers have finally come
> close to fully implementing the C++ standard, and the peformance
> issues have disappeared.
>
> The other major reason is that many open source programmers first pick
> up C and never move beyond it.  It is typically much easier to pick up
> procedural programming, and easier to site down and start coding
> without doing any planning.

And the number 1 reason Gtk+ is written in C(drumroll)...

It's UNIX, for God's sake!

:)