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I guess it's a matter of taste. Almost every time I get puzzled by some design decision in C++, it makes sense at first but then falls apart on closer inspectio

I guess it's a matter of taste. Almost every time I get puzzled by some design decision in C++, it makes sense at first but then falls apart on closer inspection. The most recent example amused me so much that I wrote a blog post about it: http://slepnev.blogspot.ch/2013/07/printing-int-in-c.html http://slepnev.blogspot.ch/2013/07/printing-int-in-c.html. My experience with Haskell so far has been the opposite, design decisions make no sense at first but then turn out to be really smart.

pandaman 13y ago
C++ library is not something that is supposed to be very useful, it's something that is supposed to be available. I, for one, never used that library in my 15 years of professional programming. Even though the library is covered by the same standard as the language it's not a part of the language and, in practice, is not even available all the time.
pkolaczk 13y ago
@pandaman: Just a minor nitpick about the statement that C++ library is not a part of the language: How come 'new' (builtin language operator, and reserverd keyword) can throw 'std::bad_alloc' (library construct) then? ;)
- pandaman 13y ago
  New itself does not throw, the allocation function does. Nobody makes you use the library allocation functions. A better nitpick would be dynamic_cast throwing under some conditions. But then, how does it make iostreams the part of the language? There is just a typedef in the std namespace that aliases the type for some optional, compiler specific, data.
pkolaczk 13y ago
@cousin_it: I have exactly the same feeling about C++ and Haskell. Another feature of this kind is inability to do virtual calls from constructors / destructors. Sure, the explanation makes perfect sense and leaves you with a feeling that C++ got it right and the rest of the world got it wrong. C++ protects you from accessing not-fully initialized object, awesome isn't it? Unfortunately it gets in the way when using factory methods (which are perfrctly ok to be called from the constructor in other languages) and is a source of subtle bugs.

pandaman 13y ago

C++ library is not something that is supposed to be very useful, it's something that is supposed to be available. I, for one, never used that library in my 15 years of professional programming. Even though the library is covered by the same standard as the language it's not a part of the language and, in practice, is not even available all the time.

pkolaczk 13y ago

@pandaman: Just a minor nitpick about the statement that C++ library is not a part of the language: How come 'new' (builtin language operator, and reserverd keyword) can throw 'std::bad_alloc' (library construct) then? ;)

pandaman 13y ago
New itself does not throw, the allocation function does. Nobody makes you use the library allocation functions. A better nitpick would be dynamic_cast throwing under some conditions. But then, how does it make iostreams the part of the language? There is just a typedef in the std namespace that aliases the type for some optional, compiler specific, data.

pkolaczk 13y ago

@cousin_it: I have exactly the same feeling about C++ and Haskell. Another feature of this kind is inability to do virtual calls from constructors / destructors. Sure, the explanation makes perfect sense and leaves you with a feeling that C++ got it right and the rest of the world got it wrong. C++ protects you from accessing not-fully initialized object, awesome isn't it? Unfortunately it gets in the way when using factory methods (which are perfrctly ok to be called from the constructor in other languages) and is a source of subtle bugs.