Re: [gtkmm] the future of gtkmm

[Matthew Walton <matthew alledora co uk>]

Paul Grenyer wrote:

> Hi
>
>
> > That's not an uncommon opinion, but the fact is that C++ is far from 
> > bullet-proof. If GNOME was going to change language entirely, I don't 
> > think it would actually be a good idea to use C++, it just doesn't 
> > offer enough of an improvement. It would have to be something garbage 
> > collected I think.
>
>
> We're probably going to have to agree to disagree over this, but...
>
> No language is bullet proof, but C++ offers a significant improvement 
> over C. I actually feel that garbage collection is a bad thing and 
> toally unnecessary.

Certainly, C++ is better than C, but I'm not convinced it's better 
enough that porting the entirety of a large C-based platform (such as 
GNOME) to it would be a good idea. It's still extremely possible to 
write incredibly stupid code in C++, and some of it's incredibly hard to 
debug.

Not, perhaps, that some other languages offer easy debugging either, but 
there is something very demoralising about repeatedly getting 
'segmentation fault'.

> The main disadvantage is that you cannot determine at what point the 
> object is destroyed. Also, the same behavoir with deterministic delete 
> can be achieved using smart points and code can be wirtten in such a 
> way as to force users of a class to use smart pointers.

As gtkmm exhibits. Smartpointers are something I've not really looked 
into properly yet - I suspect perhaps that if I tried using them at work 
I'd get taken out and shot. We still seem half stuck in C most days :-( 
Of course, my ideal would actually be some kind of language like the 
not-yet-finalised Perl 6... but compiling to code that competes with C++ 
in terms of sheer speed. It remains to be seen how fast Perl 6 will 
actually be, but I doubt it can be as fast as that. A shame, but I guess 
that's just physics for you.

> If you are an ACCU (www.accu.org) member read my article in the latest 
> overload. If you are not, join, it's the best £25 you'll ever spend as 
> a developer. I'll try and get my article onto my webiste for everyone 
> else.

I'm not a member. Looks interesting though.