The STL will give you maps, lists, vectors etc. using any types predefined as well as user defined. I find that very useful. You tend to use balanced trees instead of linked lists for caches etc. because it's so darn easy to use. If you wrote the same software in C, you'd either spend days implementing the trees yourself, or use a less efficient and error-prone general tree implementation (using void pointers).
C++ can be translated to C, so the code should be equally fast. But often you write better code in C++, because you can afford the time it takes.
Ofcourse, you can write crappy software in any language. Used wrongly, C++ can be arbitrarily slow, just like any other language.
The only thing I hate about C++ is the time it takes to compile my code. Because the compiler has to do so much work for you (matching templates etc.) it just takes a really long time often.
A project I'm currently working on is now around 4K lines of C++, and it takes 25 minutes to compile (using -O1) on a P133. That actually slows development. However, if I'd written the program in C, it'd been more like 40K lines, and there's no way I would have gotten as far as I am now.
All in all, you don't get faster code (usually, there are some exceptions though) from C++, but often you write better software.
Slashdot Mirror
wget -r
works wonders too
Grroooorrr!
The STL will give you maps, lists, vectors etc. using any types predefined as well as user defined. I find that very useful. You tend to use balanced trees instead of linked lists for caches etc. because it's so darn easy to use. If you wrote the same software in C, you'd either spend days implementing the trees yourself, or use a less efficient and error-prone general tree implementation (using void pointers).
C++ can be translated to C, so the code should be equally fast. But often you write better code in C++, because you can afford the time it takes.
Ofcourse, you can write crappy software in any language. Used wrongly, C++ can be arbitrarily slow, just like any other language.
The only thing I hate about C++ is the time it takes to compile my code. Because the compiler has to do so much work for you (matching templates etc.) it just takes a really long time often.
A project I'm currently working on is now around 4K lines of C++, and it takes 25 minutes to compile (using -O1) on a P133. That actually slows development. However, if I'd written the program in C, it'd been more like 40K lines, and there's no way I would have gotten as far as I am now.
All in all, you don't get faster code (usually, there are some exceptions though) from C++, but often you write better software.
Just my 0.02 euro.
Hell, get me 100 Kg of weapons grade uranium.
;)
Then things are gonna change... Oh, yearh !