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I have sort of the opposite feeling: I love that in C++ I can create very nice abstractions while being fairly confident that the compiler will transform them i

I have sort of the opposite feeling: I love that in C++ I can create very nice abstractions while being fairly confident that the compiler will transform them into code with C-like performance. That is, as long as you know what to avoid (namely: heap allocations and unnecessary copying).

bjz_ 13y ago
Exactly. That is what is lost in most of these debates. In order to move forward in the design of systems programming languages, we must first recognize what makes C++ great, in spite of its deep flaws.
Pxtl 13y ago
This is the thing. This is what gets lost. C++ was designed with the premise that the language allows you to use it both in a C-like context and a Java-like context. The problem is that some of the baggage of the former interferes with the latter. C++ is danged ugly in some places in ways that could be expressed cleanly in higher-level languages. That's what C++ coders want - C++ with modules and real generics and fast compile-times and ways to cleanly implement and use garbage-collection if you so choose. A language that lets you say incredibly complicated and detailed things, and then lets you abstract them away into a library or a class or some other unit of organization that lets another coder use your stuff without absorbing the complexity. All these "C++ replacements" assume that the solution is to gut out all the C-like stuff. What they should be looking to do is giving developers clean alternatives to the C-like stuff, including ways for the hardcore developers to provide their own clean alternatives to the C-like stuff. Don't give us garbage collection, give us the tools to write libraries that provide clean garbage collection to a developer.
- pmelendez 13y ago
  >"This is what gets lost. C++ was designed with the premise that the language allows you to use it both in a C-like context and a Java-like context." I got lost with the "Java-like context" thing. If I am not mistaken, by the time that C++ was designed there no language with a GB other than Lisp dialects. Jav a would appear like 12 years after, so I am not sure what you mean with Java-lik e context. As for the design goals of C++, I think was actually to create a superset of C t hat allow to give abstraction facilities that C doesn't have (starting with OOP but right now way more than that)
  - pjmlp 13y ago
    If by GB you mean garbage collection. Lisp, Smalltalk, Ada, Simula, ML, ... Simula was the inspiration for C++ by the way.

bjz_ 13y ago

Exactly. That is what is lost in most of these debates. In order to move forward in the design of systems programming languages, we must first recognize what makes C++ great, in spite of its deep flaws.

Pxtl 13y ago

This is the thing. This is what gets lost. C++ was designed with the premise that the language allows you to use it both in a C-like context and a Java-like context. The problem is that some of the baggage of the former interferes with the latter. C++ is danged ugly in some places in ways that could be expressed cleanly in higher-level languages. That's what C++ coders want - C++ with modules and real generics and fast compile-times and ways to cleanly implement and use garbage-collection if you so choose. A language that lets you say incredibly complicated and detailed things, and then lets you abstract them away into a library or a class or some other unit of organization that lets another coder use your stuff without absorbing the complexity. All these "C++ replacements" assume that the solution is to gut out all the C-like stuff. What they should be looking to do is giving developers clean alternatives to the C-like stuff, including ways for the hardcore developers to provide their own clean alternatives to the C-like stuff. Don't give us garbage collection, give us the tools to write libraries that provide clean garbage collection to a developer.

pmelendez 13y ago
>"This is what gets lost. C++ was designed with the premise that the language allows you to use it both in a C-like context and a Java-like context." I got lost with the "Java-like context" thing. If I am not mistaken, by the time that C++ was designed there no language with a GB other than Lisp dialects. Jav a would appear like 12 years after, so I am not sure what you mean with Java-lik e context. As for the design goals of C++, I think was actually to create a superset of C t hat allow to give abstraction facilities that C doesn't have (starting with OOP but right now way more than that)
- pjmlp 13y ago
  If by GB you mean garbage collection. Lisp, Smalltalk, Ada, Simula, ML, ... Simula was the inspiration for C++ by the way.