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It's amusing how people attack C++ from both directions. You get the main article apparently complaining that C++ isn't retarded simple and verbose like C. Th

It's amusing how people attack C++ from both directions. You get the main article apparently complaining that C++ isn't retarded simple and verbose like C. Then you also get people like in this link basically complaining that C++ isn't Lisp. Allow me to clarify: C++ is a replacement for C. C code rewritten as C++ will almost always be shorter and the same speed. The structure and function of the code will also tend to be clearer in C++.

makecheck 17y ago
C++ has a high price in terms of binary incompatibility. Its mangling is (still) complex and fairly non-standard across compilers, which means that libraries are unusable unless you know how they were built and have built them all consistently. Plain C libraries, however, are generally plug and play. To put up with the pain that is C++ mangling (which I sometimes do), I need to be using major features of C++. If you're only using C++ to make shorter, prettier code that could just as easily be C, you're creating an unnecessarily fragile binary. Clearly C++ has its advantages, I'm just saying that you should require a lot of those features before accepting it as a language. This is especially true now that C has been absorbing some of the advantageous features of C++, such as inlining.
- wizardofoz 17y ago
  C++ has a high price in terms of binary incompatibility. I find this statement to be rather untrue because I think most modern compilers when forced to be ISO/ANSI compliant (i do: g++ -ansi -pedantic) ensure your code is portable across systems.
  - makecheck 17y ago
    Which ones? I can't even make GCC 3.x and GCC 4.x link together reliably.
    - wizardofoz 17y ago
      Well I wrote (a command-line) program that was about 2000 lines long in C++ and during most of the development period I used g++ with the -ansi & -pedantic options. Later I was able to get my program to compile on Visual C++ with absolutely no modification.
      - makecheck 17y ago
        Ah, that's different, that's just compilation (and yes, I've seen compilation incompatibilities too; VS usually requires code changes to compile). I was referring to the binary interface. What I'd want to do (and generally can with C) is compile a library with any compiler, and link it with any other code, with no recompiling. You see this all the time with Unix, say; maybe Sun compiles a bunch of stuff with their C compiler, but you can easily link to what's in /usr/lib using GCC. But with C++, it's typical for the loader to not link C++ libraries that were built differently; and if you're really unlucky, the loader won't notice and instead you'll see subtle binary errors at runtime.

makecheck 17y ago

C++ has a high price in terms of binary incompatibility. Its mangling is (still) complex and fairly non-standard across compilers, which means that libraries are unusable unless you know how they were built and have built them all consistently. Plain C libraries, however, are generally plug and play. To put up with the pain that is C++ mangling (which I sometimes do), I need to be using major features of C++. If you're only using C++ to make shorter, prettier code that could just as easily be C, you're creating an unnecessarily fragile binary. Clearly C++ has its advantages, I'm just saying that you should require a lot of those features before accepting it as a language. This is especially true now that C has been absorbing some of the advantageous features of C++, such as inlining.

wizardofoz 17y ago
C++ has a high price in terms of binary incompatibility. I find this statement to be rather untrue because I think most modern compilers when forced to be ISO/ANSI compliant (i do: g++ -ansi -pedantic) ensure your code is portable across systems.
- makecheck 17y ago
  Which ones? I can't even make GCC 3.x and GCC 4.x link together reliably.
  - wizardofoz 17y ago
    Well I wrote (a command-line) program that was about 2000 lines long in C++ and during most of the development period I used g++ with the -ansi & -pedantic options. Later I was able to get my program to compile on Visual C++ with absolutely no modification.
    - makecheck 17y ago
      Ah, that's different, that's just compilation (and yes, I've seen compilation incompatibilities too; VS usually requires code changes to compile). I was referring to the binary interface. What I'd want to do (and generally can with C) is compile a library with any compiler, and link it with any other code, with no recompiling. You see this all the time with Unix, say; maybe Sun compiles a bunch of stuff with their C compiler, but you can easily link to what's in /usr/lib using GCC. But with C++, it's typical for the loader to not link C++ libraries that were built differently; and if you're really unlucky, the loader won't notice and instead you'll see subtle binary errors at runtime.