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Bjarne Stroustrup Reveals All On C++
An anonymous reader writes "Bjarne Stroustrup, the creative force behind one of the most widely used and successful programming languages — C++ — is featured in an in-depth 8-page interview where he reveals everything programmers and software engineers should know about C++; its history, what it was intended to do, where it is at now, and of course what all good code-writers should think about when using the language he created."
C++ is a language of a million gotchas. The moment I start having to think about implementation detail and I'm not writing an operating system or compiler, I know I'm using the wrong language.
The pun seems to be that KDE isn't structured, efficient, portable or serious, despite being written in C++. I can't blame you for missing it, or finding it not funny.
...it's largely a waste of time. The author spends an inordinate amount of time complaining that C++ prefers compile-time overhead to run-time overhead, and has no understanding that C++ is designed to have no unnecessary performance penalty relative to C. It would be nice if he did, as whatever insights the FQA author has concerning OO languages could be gleaned without wading through a few thousand lines of whining over the lack of things like garbage collection, heap compaction, run time bounds-checking, etc. He also has apparently never heard of Boost.
I'm afraid that web site is one of those things that gets way too much attention in some on-line communities because of its controversial nature.
The reason the two sides are far from equally partisan is that Stroustrup freely admits there is another side to the debate and that C++ has its flaws, and he is making efforts to improve the situation. The FQA, on the other hand, just makes blanket statements like "For example, the lack of garbage collection makes C++ exceptions and operator overloading inherently defective", which simply isn't true (and neither are many of the statements made in the FQA under those particular headings).
If you read the comments the guy who wrote the FQA makes on forums like reddit, as well as throughout the FQA itself, it's pretty obvious that unlike Stroustrup, he has little interest in any balanced discussion on the subject. He's just out to prove the other side wrong — where "wrong" often means "not agreeing with him" — and perhaps, the cynic in me suspects, to make a reputation for himself in the process.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"The Design and Evolution of C++" by Stroustrup is a must-read if you are interested in why C++ is the way it is.
After reading it, I really hated C++. It's the classic example of a project that gets ruined by too many people working on it, all with their own goals, and the book tells you exactly why this happened. C++ now is a hideously complex monstrosity that is popular because it is all things to all people, not because it is a good language.
Anyway, if you disagree with me, have a look at the book. It is a testament to Stroustrup's objectivity that I came to the conclusion I did, and that you may come to the exact opposite conclusion as me after reading it.
Well, there's no doubt in my mind that C++ is a language design tour de force. The question is whether its design objectives are the right ones.
They were probably the right objectives for the place (Bell Labs) and time (1979) it was conceived.
At the time, computers were inconceivably slow by today's standards. I worked at a small developer that had a very nice AT&T 3B2-400, which had a WE32000 microprocessor, which probably ran at about 10-15MHz; a half dozen programmers shared it.
As for the place, well, it was crawling with C programmers and C libraries, doing rather complex and important systems programming. Compatibility with C and proven C libraries would have been a huge thing.
So, an efficient, object oriented version of C was probably exactly what was needed.
I think that if there was any fault, it was the attempt to meet the goals of efficiency and compatibility with a language that implemented everything that (at the time was thought to be) necessary for programming in an object oriented style. Multiple inheritance carries too much baggage when all you want to do is to guarantee objects have a certain interface. Likewise, I think operator overloading is another example of trying to do too much. Yes, it makes programmer classes "first class citizens", but it really has no demonstrable practical benefit in my opinion. In situations where you need a special purpose language, it's probably better just to create one.
Still, that's hindsight. If you really understand all the things Stroustrup was trying to do, C++ is quite awe inspiring.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Yawn.
If you don't like C++, you probably just don't understand it. Yes, it's a complex language. However, if you use RAII (a fundamental tenant of C++) you will not. leak. memory. ever. Same arguments about C++ are used over and over again by people who don't grok the language. Is it the end-all be-all language? No. But it is darn good at what it does (performance minded system level code) with almost none of the problems C has (memory leaks and weak typing).
I Do C++
Likewise, I think operator overloading is another example of trying to do too much. Yes, it makes programmer classes "first class citizens", but it really has no demonstrable practical benefit in my opinion.
.add(), .subtract(), .multiply(), etc. Once I transliterated a piece of C++ code I had wrote for him and it consumed three times the space and was much less readable due to the nesting of the member functions... being able to use natural math symbols and natural parenthesis makes the math so much more readable, and when 90% of your code is math, you come to appreciate it. I wouldn't have it any other way, at this point.
I write math codes for fun and for a living. I have this discussion on an infrequent basis with a Java buddy of mine. Now granted I'm a dumb mechanical engineer and he's a smart CS major, but when I need some custom math classes that aren't provided by the language (tensors, vectors, Jacobians, Quaternions, etc.) and evaluating long math expressions, it is so much easier to view it using the native math symbols than to nest it all in member functions
On the other hand, that's not the only natural way to handle the situation you are talking about. Another way is to create a new language. Altogether, I'd rather do the kind of work you're talking about in Matlab or Octave.
I write code for clusters, now specifically CFD. Lots of math, lots of parallel processing. Matlab and Octave isn't gonna cut it, and you really desire the close to the metal aspects of c++.
It may be a narrow range, but there's a lot of people in this narrow range. Specifically, (mechanical/aerospace/etc.) engineers. C++ isn't sexy like Java or Python, but we do a lot of things you just can't do in Python, and can't do fast in Java.
Basically when you have rules you ought to (or "must" unless you want magical bugs) follow that are not enforced by the compiler, the language is flawed. Like when you oveload new but not delete and thus have incompatible memory management. Or you return a reference to a method-local (auto) string object.
It does however give rise to a market for code analysis tools that checks all the stuff the compiler will let you get away with.
But you can save the cost of these tools (or the alternative manual hunt for bugs) by using more modern and productive languages like Java or Ruby, leaving C++ for operating systems and games. And the latter is moving into other lanbguages as well, i.e. Microsofts push for C# in game development, and the widespread use of Python in e.g. EVE Online, ToonTown, Civ IV and other games.
Probably true. But what does that tell us about general language fitness really since it's equally as easy to hog resources in a language with GC? Database connections for example.
When you absolutely need deterministic release of resources you end up having to approach the problem in a similar fashion to c++ memory management anyway.
Many people believe seem to believe GC allows you to forget about resource management when it doesn't at all.
It's a great tool for a certain class of problems but not a panacea.
i wish i could stop
That's just the point. Your code isn't the problem for you to understand. In the real world where people have to look at other people's code, you often need all the debugging help you can get.
Stroustrup is being very smug in his response here. He lives in an ivory tower, how much real-world code written by other people (to a deadline or management constraints) has he ever dealt with?
My feeling is, very little..