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Bjarne Stroustrup Reflects On 25 Years of C++
eldavojohn writes "Today roughly marks C++'s first release 25 years ago when about six years of Bjarne Stroustrop's life came to fruition in the now pervasive replacement language for C. It achieved ISO standardization in 1998 and its creator regularly receives accolades. Wired's short interview contains some nice anecdotes including 'If I had thought of it and had some marketing sense every computer and just about any gadget would have had a little 'C++ Inside' sticker on it' and 'I'll just note that I consider the idea of one language, one programming tool, as the one and only best tool for everyone and for every problem infantile. If someone claims to have the perfect language he is either a fool or a salesman or both.' There's some surprising revelations in here, too, as his portable computer runs Windows."
And if anyone thinks C++ is the perfect language they're an idiot.
Sometimes, it is more important to have the right problem than the best solution.
This is certainly true in more ways than he intended. C++ is as awful as it is useful: Extremely. I will remember this quote next time I have to make an implementation recommendation: "C++ is the right problem for this job." Fucking terrible syntax, loaded with gotchas, requires inordinate amount of expertise to avoid subtle errors--and utterly indispensable when a high-performance general purpose programming language is needed.
C++ is popular for the same reason Windows is popular (and in fact, Windows' popularity probably fuels a lot of the popularity of C++): it is widely deployed, people know it, and there is a lot of legacy code that depends on it. Popularity does not make a language good, and I think we have enough examples: COBOL, FORTRAN, C++, etc. C++ has a number of glaring omissions from the standard, and worse yet, things in the standard that are now idiomatically avoided (see Effective C++ and Effective STL if you are interested -- auto_ptr certainly comes to mind). There are some really great languages out there, which just don't have the same non-technical advantages that C++ enjoys, and therefore never became popular among mainstream programmers.
Palm trees and 8
I can't stand C++, it's all but unreadable to me.
That's because just about every C++ coder wants to be the guru (and maybe find the error that gets the $2 check from Bjarne - I actually saw one and the guy who got it framed it!) so, what do they do? Ever frick'in chance they get, they have to use some esoteric feature of the language in their development regardless if it's appropriate - I've done it too. For example, how many of you fellow C++ guys made a template class even though the class would only deal with one data type for ever and ever and ever? Or overloaded an operator just for the sake of overloading it - operator overloading back in my day was the most over used and abused feature in C++.
When I got over the guru thing, I always tried to keep my code well documented and used features sparingly.
For the record, templates can be awesome such as when using the STL - that saved so much grunt work!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
C++ is about freedom, features and performace. That is what makes it special and what matters in producion environments.
Objective, generic, functional -- its all there and accompained with the best preprocessor, macros and code generators by leading Intel, Microsoft, AMD and even Apple C++ compilers, but again the most important thing is that nothing is really forced upon you. No "automatic memory manager" or other "nany" and "dumb things down" features that create artificial limits, slow execution, unpredictable behavious and most importantly do not restricts you to somebody's elses narrow minded coding practices.
C++ is successful for one big reason: it provides most of the advantages of C with the conveniences of an object-oriented language. Performance is excellent (close to C, which with a good compiler is close to hand-written assembly in most cases) and there's enough capability that you can write just about anything in it, including things that you would never consider writing in manged languages (like device drivers or the VM for those managed languages).
The problem is that the developers of C++ have trouble saying "no". There are a bunch of C++ features that aren't really necessary, but that exist either out of legacy or because someone thought it would be a good idea.
Look at Google's C++ style guide: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml#Inheritance
Like most users of C++, Google uses a severely restricted subset of the language. The thing is, most of what Google has left out is quite frankly unnecessary for 99.9% of C++ users. But we're all stuck with it anyway.
Once you get past some of the C-legacy anachronisms and restrict C++ to a small subset of its functionality, it's actually a nice language. The problem is that we can't take things out at this point.
I won't bother speculating why C++ became dominant (any more than I feel like rehashing VHS vs BetaMax), but I will say this: any language that needs a series of books explaining how NOT to use the language (lest you create obscure bugs) is an inherently flawed language.
With assembly there's an excuse - you have no boundaries (no pun intended). You realize you're operating on bare metal, or at least one step above it. But with C++ you have this belief that you have the illusion of power and safety, but the reality is you have a jumble of constructs and tools that can easily be used wrong (and often are by novices and intermediate developers).
I daresay you could teach an intermediate coder how to do OO in straight C and get better results than if they were trying to use C++.
And yeah, I'm in the camp of "Obj-C is better than C++". But then, I like Ruby, Lisp, Clojure, and Scala too. C++ really needs to die. Any further energy spent on C++ needs instead to be put into JVM and other abstraction technologies.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
What really killed C++ for me was when a student created a situation like this:
std::string somefunction(){}
After all that discussion about whether it really is a problem with the language specification, I have to say that this example is the lamest reason to damn an entire programming language. It is like damning staplers because they shoot staples into your face when you hold it backwards. Here's a tip: don't do that.
That's exactly how I learned, and probably a lot of the pro coders. I started with GW-Basic, turbo pascal, visual basic, then hit a wall. Why won't my crc-32 work quickly? Use a .dll in C. So I learned C, and had some polymorphic class type stuff happening.
Then I decided to learn C++. Bloat I thought, but I basically used C syntax with a few C++ things like new. Then I had a reason to use polymorphism, and I have to say it made the code clean. I learned a lot by looking at various open source code bits, and there is a big difference between well-organized code and poorly organized. Without an intelligent IDE like MSVS 2005, where you can say "find definition" or "find references", C++ can be so poorly laid out that it's incomprehensible. But the compiler can figure it out.
At the same time I learned C++, I also regressed into x86 assembly and some 6502 as well. Now, when I debug poor C# or SQL performance, people are amazed that I can figure out where the bottlenecks are without even profiling or running the app. Knowing the language helps, but knowing what the computer has to do under the hood is priceless. You don't know the exact algorithm, but you know enough. When you see something like SqlCommandBuilder that magically knows the insert or update or delete commands for each table, you have to be able to know not to use it if you need performance. IF that's not obvious then you should really go back to the basics and unlearn.
Like when Java came out and everyone called it slow and bloated. Sure it was on some machines, but a lot of it was inefficient string concatenation. Using strings and putting them together instead of using StringBuilder or whatever it's called. Each append required allocation, copy, copy, and a free or two. The language could have helped clarify the intended usage, and examples could have been better, but lots of people don't learn the right way.
I see way too many posts on forums when I'm searching for information on poorly documented language features that indicate people don't read a single book or have any formal study of the language. They just start copying things they see, and re-use it because it worked last time. And it's even worse now, there are snippets everywhere on how to do things and no explanation on why, or what not to do. If I ever get to be a hiring interviewer, I'm going to have some very basic questions, not a programming exercise. Things like give me an example where a struct would be a better choice and where a class would be better. And for advanced positions, how to write a polymorphic class in C. Top-tier would have to modify the behavior of a program, without having the source code. Replacing me would require doing it without altering the binary.
In short, learn how the damned thing works and any language will be decent. More importantly, you can decide which one is most appropriate.
Why on earth would you want them to be? They aren't the same type of data. If you add 45 degrees to pi radians, the answer should not be approximately 48.142.
Unfortunately, although Linus Torvalds is an excellent leader of technology development, he sometimes exhibits unsophisticated social behavior.
In the linked message from Linus, *YOU* are full of bullshit, he gives good reasons why he doesn't like C++, but he does not fully analyze the entire situation.
For example, he says "C++ leads to really really bad design choices". That's true in many cases, but C++ programming could be limited to the features that work well. Many of the problems with C++ are caused by programmers using features that they don't fully understand, only so they can get some experience using them. Often, it seems, programmers just want to experiment, and don't care about the long-term end result of what they are coding.
Another problem with C++ is that, while Bjarne Stroustrop was a good leader when C++ was introduced, he has basically exercised too little power in the last 20 years in making sure the C++ language and libraries developed rapidly enough, and in the correct direction.
Still, as bad as the situation is with C++, what is better? Java and C# are easily decompiled; both suffer from ugly politics. C++ is better than C in that it helps programmers control the scope of variables, for example.
When Linus Torvalds says "*YOU* are full of bullshit", he is acting out his anger, he is not acting like a leader. He is not helping make the situation better.
Unfortunately, the people on whom we rely to be our leaders are not always good leaders. We can, however, be thankful for everything positive they have done for us.