Slashdot Mirror
Compiz Project Releases C++ Based v0.9.0
werfu writes "Compiz 0.9.0, the first release of Compiz rewritten in C++, has been announced on the Compiz mailing list. See the announcement for more info." Compiz has for years been one of my favorite ways to make Windows users envious, despite my (Linux) systems' otherwise low-end graphics capabilities. Besides the switch to C++ from C, this release "brings a whole new developer API, splits rendering into plugins,
switches the buildsystem from automake to cmake and brings minor functionality improvements."
I'm excited to learn about more software using this new programming language of the future!
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The relevant words from the announcement are "complete rewrite". Or in simpler terms for the users, you do not want to run this until it reaches 0.10 (also as per the article.) This is a development and not stable release. (Sure would be nice if they would go 1.0 instead of .10 if it's going to be a stable release...)
Here's the stuff from the announcement interesting to users:
Everything else is of interest only to developers...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Compiz doesn't actually use that much system resources, nor strain your hardware either. It uses your gfx card to do all the work, which otherwise would be doing 99% nothing in most other circumstances anyway.
In fact, on old systems with a graphics card it is significantly faster than the traditional way of redrawing windows.
Why? Because:
1. the gfx card can do part of the work
2. all windows are already drawn and kept in the graphic card's memory
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I understand, but for speed I expect that C++ still outperforms Java, and while C should outperform both of them, C doesn't feature encapsulation, polymorphism and all the other goodies that OOP provides.
No, C is exactly as fast as C++. C++ only becomes slower if you use certain features that have a performance impact. Example: if you use exceptions, there is a performance penalty. If you don't, you don't get the performance penalty. That is one of the design principles of C++: nothing can be included into the language that slows down code that does not use/need it. The main slow downs you will see in your average C++ program, over the corresponding C, is the use of the string class as opposed to the nasty but fast strcpy and friends, and the extra indirect function calls due to virtual functions (which causes a branch misprediction and hence a pipeline flush on modern cpus, costing you a bunch of clock cycles). Still, you only pay for virtual if you choose to use it, and manually implemented virtual function calls are used all over the place in good old C, with the same effect. Furthermore, C++ templates allow code re-use with exactly 0 performance loss and while the error messages are ugly, they're still a whole load prettier than doing the same thing the C way with recursive includes and lots of preprocessor madness. And you can link to existing C code/libraries without any problems. Frankly, there is no valid reason for starting a new program in C in this day and age.
No, karma whoring is to post something completely obvious you know will be modded up and not add anything to the discussion. Like this comment.
If you don't value your time.
Linux is only free if your time is worth nothing.
Windows is only $119.99 if your time is worth nothing.