Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!uw-entropy!dataio!bright
From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ Not Ready for Commercial Use
Message-ID: <2169@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 18 Oct 89 14:45:12 GMT
References: <24.UUL1.3#913@acw.UUCP>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 50

In article <24.UUL1.3#913@acw.UUCP> guthery@acw.UUCP (Scott Guthery) writes:
<	1) C++ is *NOT* a superset of C.
The differences are minor and easily corrected. In fact, you'll probably have
to do more work to convert K&R C to ANSI C than ANSI C to C++.

<	2) C++ has been under development for over 10 years and it 
<           still isn't done.
Name a language that's done (and is still being used!). Fortran has been
around since the dawn of time, and it keeps changing.

<	3) An incompatible Release 2.0 just came out this year; existing
<	   C++ projects must either be rewritten or use two different
<	   incompatible compilers for the same langauge in their builds.
Converting to 2.0 is rather trivial. Compiling 2.0 code under an old 1.2
compiler is not practical.

<	4) C++ experts are still arguing about how many features of C++ 
<           do work and should work.
If you stick to the mainstream features, there isn't much debate about that.

<	5) Release 3.0 of C++ is under active development; still more
<	   features will be added and existing featurres "improved"; no
<	   guarantees about upward compatibility with 2.0 have been made.
See my response to 2).

<	9) The current version of the language has only a operational 
<	   definition; the final version has no definition at all.
There is a spec for 2.0. Is there a "final" spec for any other language?

<       10) There are no industrial grade development, debugging,
<           software management, configuration control or proram analysis 
<           tools for C++.
Development:	Several quality C++ implementations exist.
Debugging:	Ditto.
SW Managmnt:	Who cares.
Config Cntrl:	I use RCS. It works fine.
Prog Anal:	I always thought that most software metric analysis progs
		were pretty worthless.

<There's no way a software project manager who cares about the quality, 
<deliverability, manageability, or long-term viability of his product 
<would commit a real software project to C++ in its current state.  In
<fact I've got to wonder about the software engineering skills of 
<someone who would even think about committing a project to an undefined
<programming language.

It ain't that bad. Use of C++ has reached critical mass, which means that
the inertia of existing C++ code and use will 1) encourage the development
of new tools and refine existing ones 2) prevent arbitrary changes
to the language 3) provide continuity.