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Stroustrup on the Future of C++

Posted by Hemos on from the good-morning-reading dept.

/ASCII writes "Bjarne Stroustrup, the father of C++, has written an essay [PDF] on the features of the upcoming C++0x standard. In his essay, he argues that new features should whenever possible go into the standard library and not into the language, but that the language needs to shave of a few rough corners to make it easier to use for novices."

4 of 661 comments (clear)

  1. C++... always the ugly step-kid by MosesJones · · Score: 1, Troll


    C was never a "nice" langauge, it was ugly, had massive problems around memory allocations, and the old unallocated pointer problems. It had unmangled names, so everything was in a global scope.

    Then you had langauges like Smalltalk and Eiffel, elegant languages, simplicity, languages which gave control and power.

    Then came C++, like C but improving on some things (name mangling), and adding the "power" of multiple inheritence. But worst it didn't solve the problems around memory allocation.

    Languages like C# and Java have learnt from C++ and made it much easier to use (but not from Smalltalk see Ruby for evidence of that, and not Eiffel damn though it was good to develop it).

    C++ was IMO a dreadful halfway house of a language that had most of the flaws of C and none of the advantages of Smalltalk/Eiffel.

    Sometimes the best thing a creator of a language could do is declare it "dead" and get people to move away. Why do C++ if you can do Java/C#, why do Perl if you can do Ruby?

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  2. Re:a 'few' rough edges by TheOtherChimeraTwin · · Score: 0, Troll

    The rough edges are "++"

  3. Re:Why do C++ if you can do Java/C# by MosesJones · · Score: 0, Troll

    What I don't understand is this: if you're going to sacrifice performance then the world is your oyster

    This is of course why the folks at Boeing are using Java as the "pilot" on the next generation of autonomous Real Time spyplanes.

    Maybe in fact Java isn't actually that slow?

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
  4. Let's try this again... by __aamcgs2220 · · Score: 0, Troll

    C++ is over with already, geez. Slow, cumbersome, and nobody has a compiler for it. You should be switching to Java by now. It's fast, portable, and the JVM is everywhere. The Novell JVM is the fastest. The time of C++ is past. Let the dinosaur turn into oil already and upgrade to the technology that will take us into the 22nd century and beyond. JAVA!