[COFF] What languges would you like to learn?

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Dec 26, 2019, 2:34 PM David Arnold <davida at pobox.com> wrote:

> C++ is several different languages in one compiler.
>

The very definition of train wreck is when too many trains occupy the same
bit of track at the same time....

Warner

You can use it as a stricter C, as a C with some syntactic support of ADTs,
> as C++98-style OO, or as a C++17 style meta-programming system.  And I’ve
> probably missed a few.
>
> The resulting complexity requires a lot of discipline to use successfully,
> especially in a large team.
>
> Java competes pretty successfully with the C++98-style OO subset.  C11 now
> competes with the stricter C subset.
>
> The C++17 feature set competes with ... LISP, maybe?  It’s a pretty clear
> winner for some  application areas.
>
>
>
> d
>
> > On 27 Dec 2019, at 03:58, Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:
> >
> > You can write “cleaner C++” but you will also need to read, understand
> & possibly
> > modify other people’s code. But don’t let the naysayers stop you. You
> must find
> > out for yourself! You must speak the native language of the community
> you want
> > to be part of. If you deride their local language and proselytize
> Esperanto, the
> > natives may not take kindly to you!
> >
> >> On Dec 25, 2019, at 9:43 PM, Wesley Parish <wobblygong at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I will admit the modern version reads a lot more cleanly than the
> >> older versions. They finally got rid of the pretense that a C++ header
> >> file was the same sort of thing as a C header file.
> >>
> >> I tried to learn it back in the nineties with one of the Sams Teach
> >> Yourself books and Borland's Turbo C++ compiler (before I switched to
> >> Linux), but at the end I was still as mystified as before. It took
> >> immersion into Java before I finally got the hang of object
> >> orientation, and Java's still a lot smaller than C++.
> >>
> >> A friend wants me to write some utilities for a C++ project he's got,
> >> so I figure I may as well help him out. Otherwise I'd be just as happy
> >> without C++. I'll try to keep the complexity down to the limit
> >> suggested by the Unix philosophy - a piece of code that does only one
> >> thing and does it well. :)
> >>
> >> Wesley Parish
> >>
> >>> On 12/26/19, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >>>> On Thu, Dec 26, 2019 at 02:44:06PM +1100, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> >>>>>> On Thu, 26 Dec 2019, Wesley Parish wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I'm thinking of finally learning C++.  [...]
> >>>>>
> >>>>> C++?  That way lies madness :-)  I had to teach myself it once (with
> the
> >>>>> aid
> >>>>> of The Book) and was glad to leave it behind.  Oh, it was also the
> >>>>> first OO lang that I'd ever used, which probably didn't help.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I can still read it, bot no way will I go back to writing in it...
> >>>
> >>> Amen, brother.  Bell Labs did some great things, a lot of great things,
> >>> but C++ is not one of them.
> >>>
> >>> I read the book and wanted to like it, I liked how
> constructors/destructors
> >>> stacked, that seemed elegant to me.  I wanted that for all the methods
> and
> >>> soon found out only allocation/deallocation stacked.  That seemed lame.
> >>>
> >>> C++ seems to encourage complexity and I hate complexity.  I tolerate
> >>> it when there is no other way, but as my math kids say, if you have the
> >>> right answer, it is beautiful and simple.  Complex is reserved for when
> >>> you haven't figured it out yet.  That's not totally fair, I've written
> >>> some complex code but I did have the nagging feeling there must be a
> >>> simpler way.
> >>>
> >>> C++ teams are riddled with rules "don't use this, don't use that".
> It's
> >>> an interesting language to look at but I'll choose C over C++ every
> time.
> >>> You can fake OO in C, Sun did it with vnodes and it worked just fine.
> I'd
> >>> rather fake it and have it be simple than have C++ and have it be
> weird.
> >>>
> >>> That might be me just being an old fart but I have yet to have someone
> >>> I admire tell me I need to use C++.
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> >>>
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