Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!apple!Apple.COM!lsr
From: lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: C++
Message-ID: <4166@internal.Apple.COM>
Date: 14 Sep 89 21:11:50 GMT
Sender: usenet@Apple.COM
Organization: Objects-R-Us,  Apple Computer, Inc.
Lines: 34
References:<336@castle.ed.ac.uk> <13519@well.UUCP> <6494@columbia.edu> <2614@husc6.harvard.edu>

In article <2614@husc6.harvard.edu> siegel@endor.harvard.edu (Rich Siegel) 
writes:

> so elegant? In my opinion, C++ is a kitchen-sink language, some features
> of which are very useful, but many others of which are just in there 
because
> they seemed like the right thing to have. "Typesafe linkage"? So that the
> wrong routine gets called just because I pass the wrong number of
> parameters? "Default parameters"? Just because I'm too lazy to pass the
> right number of parameters?

I agree with you that C++ is a kitchen-sink language.  Its biggest failing 
is that it suffers from the C Philosophy of letting the programmer get 
close to the machine language, and providing the maximum efficiency at the 
expense of elegance.  (The best example is stack-based objects, which are 
nice for efficiency, but introduce a ton of complications into the 
language.)

I disagree about type-safe linking, however.  This actually is a big win, 
for the same reason compile-time type-checking is a win.  It catches 
errors early in the game.  For example, you can catch errors if you try to 
link with a library that was compiled with direct 68881 calls with a 
program that wasn't.  (The type signatures of won't match.)  

Default parameters are useful along with function overloading.  It 
provides another mechanism for overloading a function name, without having 
to write a separate procedure.  It is true, however, that you can get into 
trouble when you use default parameters (and overloading, for that matter).

Larry Rosenstein, Apple Computer, Inc.
Object Specialist

Internet: lsr@Apple.com   UUCP: {nsc, sun}!apple!lsr
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