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angelbob · 04-04-2003, 03:58 PM

How hard are you willing to work to turn the tone of this into a flame war? We've already got all the usual attributes of one, but we've managed to stay reasonably civil and on-topic.

But yes, you did in fact offer a major feature. I still choose not to weight the history itself in my consideration of the language. I weight the feature in my consideration of the language, and I in fact debate precisely that feature later in the same message. I'm not ignoring that feature, no matter how many time you repeat that I am. Happy?

They're actually different revisions of the same software. Pure Software merged to become Pure/Atria, which was bought by Rational. So yes, I'm talking about both. Have you actually used the C++ support you mention, say with VC++, on an actual project? They have several *really* annoying bugs that make sorting through the warnings in C++ take several times as long. That whole mismatched new/free warning is the main culprit, though there are several other things that make it hard enough to track down that I'm 90% sure they don't use C++ much internally.
I haven't used the new Rational revision with gcc/g++ on a Unix system, only the older Pure Software version. It also has serious bugs that make it hard to use, but the new (far more expensive) version might fix that.

Interesting. I'm not familiar with valgrind, I'll look it up. Yes, I was referring to gprof, as well as tools like ElectricFence.

And if you don't care what function is being called, or whether the tool can deal with extra layers of function calls and name-mangling, you're golden. Of course, if the tool *doesn't* deal gracefully (in a way specific to your C++ compiler) with name-mangling...

So basically, you're not in favor of language designers doing *anything* besides tacking on features until the whole edifice collapses? Are you a big Ada fan, then? It was something like ten years after their language standardization before they had a compiler that supported them all. C++ only managed the more modest feat of taking ten years to hash out the details, at least those that were ever agreed on.

I believe that by and large, simple clean languages are a very good idea. I believe that languages like C++ and Perl (which I would put near the far opposite end of the current spectrum from "simple, clean languages") have very specific uses, but primarily those uses boil down to "prototyping". I believe that a hybrid prototyping/systems language (like C++) encourages people to build on those prototypes to turn them into the finished product, which creates lousy finished products (see "The Mythical Man-Month" for more on this phenomenon -- I know you've read it, you recommend it on your site).

I'm well aware of them. We were busily locking the programmers into specific C++ compilers by including some of them in the Operating System when I left Palm. While related, that's not actually the reason I left Palm.

This comes closest to a good reason for a mixed-paradigm language (between Procedural/Systems and OO, anyway) of any I've heard.
I've never seen this done well, though I've seen it done badly many times. I'm referring specifically to C-to-C++ transitions when I say that.

Here, let me ask you a question as a thought exercise, and because I need to know how crazy *I* should consider *you*. Say there was a tool which advertised a particular service, but didn't usefully perform. Using that tool was always worse than not using that tool for the advertised purposes. There were conceivable uses for the tool, but the common and advertised ones weren't really among them.
Should the tool exist?

I'm a GTK+ man, myself. They do a full dynamic inheritance system for widgets in C rather than preprocessing C++ to get the same result. I'd expect (sight unseen) that the Qt way requires storing less of the type system at runtime, but allows for less adding dynamic stuff at runtime. S'okay, I like dynamic type systems better than I like decreased memory footprint when it comes to GUI toolkits on the desktop. Where memory footprint matters (at Palm, for instance) we used neither so it was a non-issue.

If Qt is preprocessing C++ to add features then I'll remember to avoid it. "Meta-object compiler" is certainly a lovely euphemism for that, though.

04-04-2003, 03:58 PM	#54
angelbob Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Bay Area, CA, USA Posts: 39	How hard are you willing to work to turn the tone of this into a flame war? We've already got all the usual attributes of one, but we've managed to stay reasonably civil and on-topic. But yes, you did in fact offer a major feature. I still choose not to weight the history itself in my consideration of the language. I weight the feature in my consideration of the language, and I in fact debate precisely that feature later in the same message. I'm not ignoring that feature, no matter how many time you repeat that I am. Happy? They're actually different revisions of the same software. Pure Software merged to become Pure/Atria, which was bought by Rational. So yes, I'm talking about both. Have you actually used the C++ support you mention, say with VC++, on an actual project? They have several really annoying bugs that make sorting through the warnings in C++ take several times as long. That whole mismatched new/free warning is the main culprit, though there are several other things that make it hard enough to track down that I'm 90% sure they don't use C++ much internally. I haven't used the new Rational revision with gcc/g++ on a Unix system, only the older Pure Software version. It also has serious bugs that make it hard to use, but the new (far more expensive) version might fix that. Interesting. I'm not familiar with valgrind, I'll look it up. Yes, I was referring to gprof, as well as tools like ElectricFence. And if you don't care what function is being called, or whether the tool can deal with extra layers of function calls and name-mangling, you're golden. Of course, if the tool doesn't deal gracefully (in a way specific to your C++ compiler) with name-mangling... So basically, you're not in favor of language designers doing anything besides tacking on features until the whole edifice collapses? Are you a big Ada fan, then? It was something like ten years after their language standardization before they had a compiler that supported them all. C++ only managed the more modest feat of taking ten years to hash out the details, at least those that were ever agreed on. I believe that by and large, simple clean languages are a very good idea. I believe that languages like C++ and Perl (which I would put near the far opposite end of the current spectrum from "simple, clean languages") have very specific uses, but primarily those uses boil down to "prototyping". I believe that a hybrid prototyping/systems language (like C++) encourages people to build on those prototypes to turn them into the finished product, which creates lousy finished products (see "The Mythical Man-Month" for more on this phenomenon -- I know you've read it, you recommend it on your site). I'm well aware of them. We were busily locking the programmers into specific C++ compilers by including some of them in the Operating System when I left Palm. While related, that's not actually the reason I left Palm. This comes closest to a good reason for a mixed-paradigm language (between Procedural/Systems and OO, anyway) of any I've heard. I've never seen this done well, though I've seen it done badly many times. I'm referring specifically to C-to-C++ transitions when I say that. Here, let me ask you a question as a thought exercise, and because I need to know how crazy I should consider you. Say there was a tool which advertised a particular service, but didn't usefully perform. Using that tool was always worse than not using that tool for the advertised purposes. There were conceivable uses for the tool, but the common and advertised ones weren't really among them. Should the tool exist? I'm a GTK+ man, myself. They do a full dynamic inheritance system for widgets in C rather than preprocessing C++ to get the same result. I'd expect (sight unseen) that the Qt way requires storing less of the type system at runtime, but allows for less adding dynamic stuff at runtime. S'okay, I like dynamic type systems better than I like decreased memory footprint when it comes to GUI toolkits on the desktop. Where memory footprint matters (at Palm, for instance) we used neither so it was a non-issue. If Qt is preprocessing C++ to add features then I'll remember to avoid it. "Meta-object compiler" is certainly a lovely euphemism for that, though.