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Yes, even those features.
What? Given that almost all projects spend most of their lifetime in the maintenance stage, I obviously wouldn't know how to take advantage of Perl's features if I couldn't read or modify it. I was able to extend the Cobalt RaQ's Perl administration application with little difficulty, and I've barely written 200 lines of Perl. Either I'm a genius or the program was easy to modify, and I don't think it's the former.
To go against the style of the project is both unprofessional and sloppy, no matter how poor the style of the original project is. If you think your style is better than the one being used, hash it out with the project manager. I should not have to mentally switch between X number of styles when I go to maintain the code in the project. If your coleagues have problems with this, I do suggest "enforcement". But honestly, most people I've worked with don't need to be told about something so basic. It's only the interns and prima donnas (as karlan mentioned) that seem to have problems with it.
First of all, C++ is a multi-paradigm language, and this is its greatest asset, IMO. Its type system is "real"; it's called "strong typing". If you have to cast something, you'll very often get undefined behavior. And no, pointers do not have anything to do with the privacy of a field, because only the class can decide whether to allow a pointer to a private field to exist. This is the exact same with Java and references. This sabotage is completely non-existant.
*grunt* now means "pizza". Now grunts have established meaning and we can continue with our regularly scheduled programming. Honestly, no language has an established meaning other than what the users of that language assign to it. To get back to the point, if one were to have complete simplicity with absolutely no abstraction nor any "subtleties", that is the linguistic equivalent of assembly. But to everyone's chagrin, we now use languages that can express higher levels of abstraction: C has more than asm, C++ has more than C, Python more than C++, Common LISP more than Python.
No. A language primitive need only match a neighboring part of the construction of the task to increase simplicity at the algorithmic level.
By using a wheel a potter is not restricting what he can create! Using a wheel does not preclude the potter from shaping with his hands once the general shape has been achieved. It is just a tool; the equivalent of a subset of a language, not the language itself.
Not even close. Name one speciality that *restricts* your vocabulary rather than merely drilling down into the complexity of a subject.
The most ironic thing is that these are all arguments for why C++ should be encouraged:
The modern textile factory is vastly more complex than the looms of old. It has higher-level constructs (machines, assembly-line) as a whole, even if the role of the individual is lessened in the Big Picture. So I agree with your argument here. C++ in some cases will allow you to produce stuff at a tiny fraction of the cost, because there are more higher-level constructs that one can make use of.
You've completely missed the point. If garbage collection were an *optional* feature, it could be used in cases where it was beneficial and avoided where it was not. Designing to the least-common-denominator is only an argument against garbage collection when that feature is forced upon the users. You should understand by now that I am arguing the exact opposite of this.
*cheers*
To enumerate the covered advantages of C++ (vs. C) in our debate:
1) When you want generic code such that a user of your library can call functions with both user-defined and built-in types.
2) When you want to change the return value of a function used in I/O without having to go back and change all users of that return value.
3) When you want an error-handling system that is not coupled to the return type of functions.
4) When you want natural math operations with user-defined types.
5) When you don't want to write Yet Another Linked List, or Yet Another String Handling System.
6) When you want to use strings with pass-by-value semantics.
And for C:
1) When you don't want to deal with other people doing something you don't understand or don't like.
(Edit: Added 'or don't like' to C's advantage.)
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