First of all, since C++ is a 99% superset of C (that is, almost all C code including variable length function arguments is also valid C++), arguments like "C++ lets you do less" are not valid. Anything you can do in C, I can do in C++ in exactly the same way. As for untyped functions (I'm not familiar with that term, but I presume you mean functions with no prototypes), just spend a few extra seconds to write a prototype for every new function, it will save time in the long run; and I don't see how it "weakens" the language.
The complexity of C++ is a valid argument and I agree that the simplicity of C is one of its major strengths.
However, I think by blasting "abstraction" is general, you are missing something that is fundamental to *all* programming, not just OO. For example, the concept of "function" is an abstraction. After all, "goto" is much more like the computer *really works* than insane abstractions like loops and organised blocks of code. Why should programmers waste time learning useless bloated things like that? So, assembly language is clearly superior to C; asm is much more simple and direct. COMPUTERS ARE NOT STRUCTURED; NEITHER SHOULD PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES BE.
You can see how silly the preceding argument is:). Well, after learning OO, the discourse from structured-paradigm programmers sounds strikingly similar. After a while, thinking of things in terms of objects becomes just as intuitive as thinking in terms of functions, and you don't want to go back. If you explore OOP, I think you will find that it is beautiful.
Most C++ programmers have lots of respect for C; after all, it is half of our language. Perhaps before being disrespectful to C++, you should learn more about it.
Come on people, why is this comment being moderated up? This person is announcing the imminent death of Intel merely because of reports of a few problems in their new chipsets. And open source/specs is not a magic potion that solves every problem, especially not from a large corporation's point of view!
On the contrary, history has shown that opening specs can be a very _bad_ thing for revenue, all ethical concerns aside. IBM suffered greatly because they let others produce clones of their hardware. Microsoft and Sony, with very closed strategies, are thriving.
Don't moderate up a comment just because you like, in principle, what it's saying. Moderate comments that really are insightful and well thought out, regardless of your personal point of view.
If you're almost always at your computer when it's on, a neat trick is to trigger a sound effect whenever someone uses one of your services. For example, put something like this in/etc/hosts.allow (assuming you have TCP wrappers):
The internet is just beginning to get popular and I get the impression that right now, it is not a major concern of most politicians. Do you think that websites are already an important part of this batch of candidates' campaign? If not, when will it be and why?
C programmers that feel turned off from C++ by that article, don't be. Though he took a different approach from most C++-bashers (oh no! it's "bloated"!), it looks like he hasn't kept track of recent developments in C++. Templates are not the primitive feature they were in '94 and today, actually solve many of the problems he talks about.
First of all, he talks at length about having to make a loop to add the contents of 2 arrays. He suggests we should allow a construct such as "array3 = array1 + array2". Yes, the loop is annoying and error-prone. But his idea is seriously flawed! The problem is ambiguity. With such a construct, what exactly do we add? All the elements? The first element? There is no correct answer and such a construct can only lead to confusion.
Also, it does not provide a general enough solution. What if I want to add only half the elements in the array? I will have to write a loop anyway, thus the feature is too feeble. So, I presume he didn't mean that literally.
C++ provides standard library components to solve exactly that sort of problem. With something like for_each(), I could've done that in a single line, without a loop, and what's more I could've chosen to add only half the elements in the array.
Oh, and by the way, with operator overloading it would be easy (but dumb, as stated earlier) to overload operator+() to add the contents of those arrays together.
And C++ already provides almost direct support for his "virtual class" concept. Simply create another inheritance hierarchy for the "virtual class", parralel to the first, with virtual functions used to read/write to its members. Although it means a bit more syntax, in the long wrong this will be a _good thing_ because you might find out you need to extend the parralel hierarchy separately from the original. Frankly I don't feel that this aspect of C++ needs any change at all.
The committee that standardized C++ includes many of the best language designers in the industry. I've found that C++ elegantly solves every problem I could throw at it. Before you clamor for new features, think about whether what you want to do can already be done by combining existing features of the language.
Here's a short summary of the first 30 minutes for people who couldn't stream it :
- Crusoe is, from what I understand, an extremely simple and compact RISC processor that supports x86 entirely through an integrated emulator. It is as fast as "traditional" processors, cheap to produce and extremely low power (1 W)
- There are two models right now : a 400mhz/~128kb cache for notebooks, and a 700mhz/~400kb cache for laptops.
- Several APM techniques, like a "deep sleep" mode that means you'll almost never have to reboot your laptop. Cool:)
- They both run every x86 operating system -- emulation is complete.
- More processors are forthcoming! Looks like Transmeta is planning to take over the mobile market. "If it has a battery and a web browser, it's going to be built with Crusoe".
Well, it looks like their gamble paid off:). Looks like a great CPU.
Rob, in that apology you explained why you did what you did in detail and then bashed the whole Slashdot community. Imho, not many flamers will be soothed by that. I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up apologizing for your apology:).
Personally, I think you were right to post this because it raised interesting issues. Probably the real reason you were bashed was because you phrased the news article in a way that might be interpreted as "sensationalist".
Next time you post something that might be controversial, try adding something like "but let's take this with a grain of salt", etc. That will preserve the interesting discussion but you'll never get flamed. And/. will be boring if you guys are scared of posting controversial articles!
Artists and engineers have no intrinsic right to their creations. The reason for copyright is not to protect producers but users.
As RMS puts it, an idea or design is not spaghetti that only one person can eat; it can be enjoyed by everyone, therefore it should be owned by everyone. Artists don't have the right to punish _the whole world_ because they came up with an idea first.
A good example is the case of the bzip compression format; from what I've heard, it's much better than the LZW compression format (.zip,.tar.gz) everyone uses, but it isn't popular because of a lame patent that was put on the algorithm.
This is exactly the same; if Apple has an intrinsic right to their GUI, that means that none of their innovations can be used by anyone else, thus disadvantage everyone. Imagine if the author of the first text editor with scrolling believed he had an intrinsic right to the technique, and sued everyone else who used it; millions would still be suffering with 'ed'-like editors:)
I agree that the greatest coders are often those who diversify the most. Take John Carmack, for example; a casual read of his.plan files will show you that he knows way more than is necessary to build a game engine.
But JC isn't a great games coder because he knows so many other things; he is great because he _started young_. Someone who spends an hour a day coding for 10 years will know more than someone who codes 10 hours a day for 1 year. So, other knowledge is not the cause of greatness but an effect. That's why the guy who knows everything will often, in the long run, beat out the focused type.
I've heard a lot about the various BSDs being "technically superior" to Linux, but I've never actually heard any BSD advocate point out specific ways in which it is better. I've also heard it's more stable and more secure.. but a properly configured Linux box that isn't using wacky new kernel features can stay up for years, also.
Legal issues put aside, why would I want to use BSD? Thanks,
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, since C++ is a 99% superset of C (that is, almost all C code including variable length function arguments is also valid C++), arguments like "C++ lets you do less" are not valid. Anything you can do in C, I can do in C++ in exactly the same way. As for untyped functions (I'm not familiar with that term, but I presume you mean functions with no prototypes), just spend a few extra seconds to write a prototype for every new function, it will save time in the long run; and I don't see how it "weakens" the language.
:). Well, after learning OO, the discourse from structured-paradigm programmers sounds strikingly similar. After a while, thinking of things in terms of objects becomes just as intuitive as thinking in terms of functions, and you don't want to go back. If you explore OOP, I think you will find that it is beautiful.
The complexity of C++ is a valid argument and I agree that the simplicity of C is one of its major strengths.
However, I think by blasting "abstraction" is general, you are missing something that is fundamental to *all* programming, not just OO. For example, the concept of "function" is an abstraction. After all, "goto" is much more like the computer *really works* than insane abstractions like loops and organised blocks of code. Why should programmers waste time learning useless bloated things like that? So, assembly language is clearly superior to C; asm is much more simple and direct. COMPUTERS ARE NOT STRUCTURED; NEITHER SHOULD PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES BE.
You can see how silly the preceding argument is
Most C++ programmers have lots of respect for C; after all, it is half of our language. Perhaps before being disrespectful to C++, you should learn more about it.
Broccolist
Come on people, why is this comment being moderated up? This person is announcing the imminent death of Intel merely because of reports of a few problems in their new chipsets. And open source/specs is not a magic potion that solves every problem, especially not from a large corporation's point of view!
On the contrary, history has shown that opening specs can be a very _bad_ thing for revenue, all ethical concerns aside. IBM suffered greatly because they let others produce clones of their hardware. Microsoft and Sony, with very closed strategies, are thriving.
Don't moderate up a comment just because you like, in principle, what it's saying. Moderate comments that really are insightful and well thought out, regardless of your personal point of view.
Broccolist
in.telnetd: ALL: spawn (cat /usr/local/share/audio/telnet.au > /dev/audio) &
A good way to make those sounds is the web text to speech converter.
Broccolist
The internet is just beginning to get popular and I get the impression that right now, it is not a major concern of most politicians. Do you think that websites are already an important part of this batch of candidates' campaign? If not, when will it be and why?
Broccolist
C programmers that feel turned off from C++ by that article, don't be. Though he took a different approach from most C++-bashers (oh no! it's "bloated"!), it looks like he hasn't kept track of recent developments in C++. Templates are not the primitive feature they were in '94 and today, actually solve many of the problems he talks about.
First of all, he talks at length about having to make a loop to add the contents of 2 arrays. He suggests we should allow a construct such as "array3 = array1 + array2". Yes, the loop is annoying and error-prone. But his idea is seriously flawed! The problem is ambiguity. With such a construct, what exactly do we add? All the elements? The first element? There is no correct answer and such a construct can only lead to confusion.
Also, it does not provide a general enough solution. What if I want to add only half the elements in the array? I will have to write a loop anyway, thus the feature is too feeble.
So, I presume he didn't mean that literally.
C++ provides standard library components to solve exactly that sort of problem. With something like for_each(), I could've done that in a single line, without a loop, and what's more I could've chosen to add only half the elements in the array.
Oh, and by the way, with operator overloading it would be easy (but dumb, as stated earlier) to overload operator+() to add the contents of those arrays together.
And C++ already provides almost direct support for his "virtual class" concept. Simply create another inheritance hierarchy for the "virtual class", parralel to the first, with virtual functions used to read/write to its members. Although it means a bit more syntax, in the long wrong this will be a _good thing_ because you might find out you need to extend the parralel hierarchy separately from the original. Frankly I don't feel that this aspect of C++ needs any change at all.
The committee that standardized C++ includes many of the best language designers in the industry. I've found that C++ elegantly solves every problem I could throw at it. Before you clamor for new features, think about whether what you want to do can already be done by combining existing features of the language.
Broccolist
Here's a short summary of the first 30 minutes for people who couldn't stream it :
:)
:). Looks like a great CPU.
- Crusoe is, from what I understand, an extremely simple and compact RISC processor that supports x86 entirely through an integrated emulator. It is as fast as "traditional" processors, cheap to produce and extremely low power (1 W)
- There are two models right now : a 400mhz/~128kb cache for notebooks, and a 700mhz/~400kb cache for laptops.
- Several APM techniques, like a "deep sleep" mode
that means you'll almost never have to reboot your laptop. Cool
- They both run every x86 operating system -- emulation is complete.
- More processors are forthcoming! Looks like Transmeta is planning to take over the mobile market. "If it has a battery and a web browser, it's going to be built with Crusoe".
Well, it looks like their gamble paid off
Broccolist
Rob, in that apology you explained why you did what you did in detail and then bashed the whole Slashdot community. Imho, not many flamers will be soothed by that. I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up apologizing for your apology :).
/. will be boring if you guys are scared of posting controversial articles!
Personally, I think you were right to post this because it raised interesting issues. Probably the real reason you were bashed was because you phrased the news article in a way that might be interpreted as "sensationalist".
Next time you post something that might be controversial, try adding something like "but let's take this with a grain of salt", etc. That will preserve the interesting discussion but you'll never get flamed. And
Broccolist
Artists and engineers have no intrinsic right to their creations. The reason for copyright is not to protect producers but users.
.tar.gz) everyone uses, but it isn't popular because of a lame patent that was put on the algorithm.
:)
As RMS puts it, an idea or design is not spaghetti that only one person can eat; it can be enjoyed by everyone, therefore it should be owned by everyone. Artists don't have the right to punish _the whole world_ because they came up with an idea first.
A good example is the case of the bzip compression format; from what I've heard, it's much better than the LZW compression format (.zip,
This is exactly the same; if Apple has an intrinsic right to their GUI, that means that none of their innovations can be used by anyone else, thus disadvantage everyone. Imagine if the author of the first text editor with scrolling believed he had an intrinsic right to the technique, and sued everyone else who used it; millions would still be suffering with 'ed'-like editors
Broccolist
I agree that the greatest coders are often those who diversify the most. Take John Carmack, for example; a casual read of his .plan files will show you that he knows way more than is necessary to build a game engine.
But JC isn't a great games coder because he knows so many other things; he is great because he _started young_. Someone who spends an hour a day coding for 10 years will know more than someone who codes 10 hours a day for 1 year. So, other knowledge is not the cause of greatness but an effect. That's why the guy who knows everything will often, in the long run, beat out the focused type.
Broccolist
I've heard a lot about the various BSDs being "technically superior" to Linux, but I've never actually heard any BSD advocate point out specific ways in which it is better. I've also heard it's more stable and more secure .. but a properly configured Linux box that isn't using wacky new kernel features can stay up for years, also.
Legal issues put aside, why would I want to use BSD? Thanks,
Broccolist