Well, auto_ptr is a library construct, not a language concept. I could point to scanf as an equally disgusting thing in C. Lots of standard libraries go through iterations. Look at Java.
Even so, I'll agree that auto_ptr didn't work out. But we've learned and C++ has moved beyond it. auto_ptr is deprecated in C++0x. Move semantics are nice.
Any language features to name? I'm genuinely curious. I always like to learn something I didn't grok before.
While I am no stranger to the STL, templates, copy constructors, operator overloading... I try and avoid many of these as it creates too many bugs otherwise. I mean I'll use the premade STL containers. But I avoid going any deeper than superficially using them. Not because I can't... but just because it is so error prone and confuses everyone that reads it.
That's unfortunate because those tools really make it easy to write portable, safe, fast code. Techniques like RAII are indispensable. Yes, SFINAE is arcane but that really should only be used by library authors. All of the C++ features are there for a reason. They weren't just added willy-nilly. Ok, "export" but that's deprecated now. Everyone makes mistakes.:)
And the only thing you gain from it is more concise code.
No. You've completely missed the point. Operator overloading as simple syntactic sugar is useful and easy to read but its real power is in the context of generic programming. What the operators give you is a standard textual API for calling methods. In other words, I can write some generic code to do a = b + c and it's work for int, float, some matrix class or strings, provided they've overloaded the standard operators.
Yes, this could be done with named methods, something like "a.assign(b.plus(c))" but some class could call "plus" "add" or "addition." The operators give us a standard naming convention.
I hear that all the time, but I can't quite figure it out. What's so hard about the syntax? The semantics (overload resolution, ADL, etc.) is tricky, but the syntax is pretty straightforward, I think.
Like most users of C++, Google uses a severely restricted subset of the language.
Actually, I don't see much restriction there at all. Mostly style guidelines. Google, a most projects, too easily dismisses multiple inheritance, but that's there problem, not mine.
Projects that severely restrict how C++ can be used are shooting themselves in the foot. I've seen it multiple times. Once you grok the "C++ way" it becomes pretty easy to write portable, safe, fast code
I would say the opposite. Benedict XVI certainly has many, many flaws (don't we all) and I disagree with him strongly on a number of points. But he has one thing going for him that JP II did not: he's taken on sex abuse. One of the reasons it became such a problem is that JP II swept it under the rug. Benedict's strong focus on orthodoxy compels him to confront it.
People have this notion of JP II as a progressive and it's just not true. It probably stems from his focus on connecting to youth. But he was pretty authoritarian in his position. His smackdown of liberation theology is a big stain on his record.
If you are using multiple inheritance you have a flaw at the architectural level.
This is often repeated but it just isn't true. There are many excellent uses of MI and not just for interface inheritance. Mixins are quite valuable, for example.
Six months without a pay raise? Is that all? I haven't had a significant pay raise (over the rate of inflation) in several years. Most people in the U.S. have had declining real wages for 30 years.
Then you're believing a lie. Productivity has risen astronomically over the past few decades and real wages have declined. We need unions and collective bargaining more than ever. There's a direct causal relationship between declining labor power (mostly due to Congressional and executive action) and the out-of-control, ever-expanding wealth gap.
. Meanwhile you have extremely talented people with double-degrees and 10 years experience, earning a lot less simply because they don't have a greedy union to bully their employer.
I've always puzzled at this logic. If your job is so terrible and you think it unfair that others get better treatment, then start a union!
Certainly Aquinas wasn't right about everything. But he was right about a lot of things. Remember that "science" as we know it didn't exist in Aquinas' time, so the Wikipedia page is really not correct with that statement. I would say he viewed theology as another path to truth, complementary to reason and logical deduction.
And there absolutely is truth without fact. Truth is not the same as scientific law. The scientific method is a very recent development and we certainly talked about "truth" long before that came along. It is true that taking the life of another is morally wrong but there are no facts I can give you to prove it. And don't bother talking about cultural norms and all that. There is objective truth.
I agree, to a certain extent. Humans are social animals, there's no doubt about that. There definitely is, though, a tension between individual desires vs societal ones.
Absolutely. The Church is in many ways a counter to western society's overemphasis on individualism. That's why it feels so counter-cultural. Because it is! I believe we have gone way too far toward the individual and need to get back to a focus on the common good. That the Church agrees is not a happy coincidence for me. It's one of the reasons I'm Catholic.
What's your definition of "communism?" It's a loaded term. The political/economic structure of a society is a red herring. It's the values and actions that count.
I belong to several cooperatives. I don't live in a co-op as such but one doesn't need to do that to get along with neighbors and work for the common good.
There are very strict conditions under which the doctrine of infallibility holds. The pope has to explicitly say he is speaking ex cathedra, the entire Church must be in agreement with what he says, etc. Infallibility does not make the pope error-free. It has been used all of three times, all in promulgations about Mary.
Randomly picking which bits of the bible are absolutely unquestionably the literal command of god, and which bits are just allegories
The Bible is to be interpreted. There are indications of this throughout the text and the earliest Church fathers (e.g. Origen) explicitly state this in their writings. The text is not to be taken literally. It's the message of faith that matters, not absolute historical accuracy.
Condoms and contraception in general(helping spread AIDS and other effects such as overpopulation)
This displays complete ignorance of what the Church has said. While I think the current teaching is unsustainable, I can appreciate the reasoning behind it. General availability of artificial contraception can cause real problems in the relationship between two people. It's not a panacea. Condoms absolutely should be used as one tool to fight STDs but they are not the whole solution. We need much deeper changes in society and attitudes.
Celibacy of priests (and look where that has lead in terms of rampant child abuse and a complete lack of appropriate response)
Celibacy has nothing to do with child abuse. The statistics show that. Celibacy came about in response to some property abuses and in reaction to the popularity of the desert fathers. I believe its time is past but the Church moves slowly. I am convinced in a hundred years it will be no more.
Decades or even centuries of fighting against scientific discoveries that eventually become part of 'accepted teaching'
The Church moves slowly. Usually that's good. Sometimes it's not. Is it not better that the Church wrestles with things like this and is able to change rather than refusing to learn? Better late than never, right? Scientists spend decades or even centuries fighting each other, so why shouldn't the Church? No, it's not an ideal system. It is a human institution whose members are constantly wrestling with challenges to try to get at the truth.
Such as that human beings are happier and more productive when living in cooperative community rather than competing against one another in a hyper-individualistic society. That human beings are social creatures and rely on right relationship to thrive.
The abuse cases are monstrous. The hierarchy's response to them shameful. It is one of the (many) stains on JP II's record.
Birth control is a very controversial issue in the Church and not one that's been totally resolved. If you read some books on Vatican II you might be surprised. The expectation was that the Church would endorse certain forms of artificial contraception (condoms, etc.). Paul VI essentially shut that down. I expect this will be revisited failry soon.
There are, in fact, drawbacks of condom use for some people. They absolutely should be used as a defense against STDs. But the fact that such use is needed is an indication of other problems in the world.
How is it not true? I have found truths that can't in any way be scientifically proven. And I don't mean belief in a god or anything like that. These truths aren't scientific truths but they're no less valid.
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Fortran is alive and well. The 2008 standard just came out. Lots of people use it. Like C++, it is not the best language for every problem.
Generic programming. Nothing currently tops C++ for that.
Well, auto_ptr is a library construct, not a language concept. I could point to scanf as an equally disgusting thing in C. Lots of standard libraries go through iterations. Look at Java.
Even so, I'll agree that auto_ptr didn't work out. But we've learned and C++ has moved beyond it. auto_ptr is deprecated in C++0x. Move semantics are nice.
Any language features to name? I'm genuinely curious. I always like to learn something I didn't grok before.
This is one of the more insightful statements about C++ I've read recently. Thank you!
That's unfortunate because those tools really make it easy to write portable, safe, fast code. Techniques like RAII are indispensable. Yes, SFINAE is arcane but that really should only be used by library authors. All of the C++ features are there for a reason. They weren't just added willy-nilly. Ok, "export" but that's deprecated now. Everyone makes mistakes. :)
No. You've completely missed the point. Operator overloading as simple syntactic sugar is useful and easy to read but its real power is in the context of generic programming. What the operators give you is a standard textual API for calling methods. In other words, I can write some generic code to do a = b + c and it's work for int, float, some matrix class or strings, provided they've overloaded the standard operators.
Yes, this could be done with named methods, something like "a.assign(b.plus(c))" but some class could call "plus" "add" or "addition." The operators give us a standard naming convention.
I hear that all the time, but I can't quite figure it out. What's so hard about the syntax? The semantics (overload resolution, ADL, etc.) is tricky, but the syntax is pretty straightforward, I think.
Actually, I don't see much restriction there at all. Mostly style guidelines. Google, a most projects, too easily dismisses multiple inheritance, but that's there problem, not mine.
Projects that severely restrict how C++ can be used are shooting themselves in the foot. I've seen it multiple times. Once you grok the "C++ way" it becomes pretty easy to write portable, safe, fast code
Do you have some examples?
I would say the opposite. Benedict XVI certainly has many, many flaws (don't we all) and I disagree with him strongly on a number of points. But he has one thing going for him that JP II did not: he's taken on sex abuse. One of the reasons it became such a problem is that JP II swept it under the rug. Benedict's strong focus on orthodoxy compels him to confront it.
People have this notion of JP II as a progressive and it's just not true. It probably stems from his focus on connecting to youth. But he was pretty authoritarian in his position. His smackdown of liberation theology is a big stain on his record.
This is often repeated but it just isn't true. There are many excellent uses of MI and not just for interface inheritance. Mixins are quite valuable, for example.
In what way is it wrong? That's a pretty bold statement to make.
What wrong stuff? Please be specific.
Six months without a pay raise? Is that all? I haven't had a significant pay raise (over the rate of inflation) in several years. Most people in the U.S. have had declining real wages for 30 years.
Agree on the downward trend in productivity etc.
Then you're believing a lie. Productivity has risen astronomically over the past few decades and real wages have declined. We need unions and collective bargaining more than ever. There's a direct causal relationship between declining labor power (mostly due to Congressional and executive action) and the out-of-control, ever-expanding wealth gap.
. Meanwhile you have extremely talented people with double-degrees and 10 years experience, earning a lot less simply because they don't have a greedy union to bully their employer.
I've always puzzled at this logic. If your job is so terrible and you think it unfair that others get better treatment, then start a union!
Certainly Aquinas wasn't right about everything. But he was right about a lot of things. Remember that "science" as we know it didn't exist in Aquinas' time, so the Wikipedia page is really not correct with that statement. I would say he viewed theology as another path to truth, complementary to reason and logical deduction.
And there absolutely is truth without fact. Truth is not the same as scientific law. The scientific method is a very recent development and we certainly talked about "truth" long before that came along. It is true that taking the life of another is morally wrong but there are no facts I can give you to prove it. And don't bother talking about cultural norms and all that. There is objective truth.
Check User ID. :)
I agree, to a certain extent. Humans are social animals, there's no doubt about that. There definitely is, though, a tension between individual desires vs societal ones.
Absolutely. The Church is in many ways a counter to western society's overemphasis on individualism. That's why it feels so counter-cultural. Because it is! I believe we have gone way too far toward the individual and need to get back to a focus on the common good. That the Church agrees is not a happy coincidence for me. It's one of the reasons I'm Catholic.
What's your definition of "communism?" It's a loaded term. The political/economic structure of a society is a red herring. It's the values and actions that count.
I belong to several cooperatives. I don't live in a co-op as such but one doesn't need to do that to get along with neighbors and work for the common good.
Ok, let's look at each one of these:
nfallibility of the pope
There are very strict conditions under which the doctrine of infallibility holds. The pope has to explicitly say he is speaking ex cathedra, the entire Church must be in agreement with what he says, etc. Infallibility does not make the pope error-free. It has been used all of three times, all in promulgations about Mary.
Randomly picking which bits of the bible are absolutely unquestionably the literal command of god, and which bits are just allegories
The Bible is to be interpreted. There are indications of this throughout the text and the earliest Church fathers (e.g. Origen) explicitly state this in their writings. The text is not to be taken literally. It's the message of faith that matters, not absolute historical accuracy.
Condoms and contraception in general(helping spread AIDS and other effects such as overpopulation)
This displays complete ignorance of what the Church has said. While I think the current teaching is unsustainable, I can appreciate the reasoning behind it. General availability of artificial contraception can cause real problems in the relationship between two people. It's not a panacea. Condoms absolutely should be used as one tool to fight STDs but they are not the whole solution. We need much deeper changes in society and attitudes.
Celibacy of priests (and look where that has lead in terms of rampant child abuse and a complete lack of appropriate response)
Celibacy has nothing to do with child abuse. The statistics show that. Celibacy came about in response to some property abuses and in reaction to the popularity of the desert fathers. I believe its time is past but the Church moves slowly. I am convinced in a hundred years it will be no more.
Decades or even centuries of fighting against scientific discoveries that eventually become part of 'accepted teaching'
The Church moves slowly. Usually that's good. Sometimes it's not. Is it not better that the Church wrestles with things like this and is able to change rather than refusing to learn? Better late than never, right? Scientists spend decades or even centuries fighting each other, so why shouldn't the Church? No, it's not an ideal system. It is a human institution whose members are constantly wrestling with challenges to try to get at the truth.
Such as that human beings are happier and more productive when living in cooperative community rather than competing against one another in a hyper-individualistic society. That human beings are social creatures and rely on right relationship to thrive.
Yes, it's very widespread. Everyone I know thinks the Church did a great job handling things.
Try not to think of people of faith as mindless drones agreeing with leaders without question.
Yes, and the entire Church thinks this.
The abuse cases are monstrous. The hierarchy's response to them shameful. It is one of the (many) stains on JP II's record.
Birth control is a very controversial issue in the Church and not one that's been totally resolved. If you read some books on Vatican II you might be surprised. The expectation was that the Church would endorse certain forms of artificial contraception (condoms, etc.). Paul VI essentially shut that down. I expect this will be revisited failry soon.
There are, in fact, drawbacks of condom use for some people. They absolutely should be used as a defense against STDs. But the fact that such use is needed is an indication of other problems in the world.
How is it not true? I have found truths that can't in any way be scientifically proven. And I don't mean belief in a god or anything like that. These truths aren't scientific truths but they're no less valid.