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From: klimas@astro.pc.ab.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Project experience with C++
Message-ID: <350.26bd5757@astro.pc.ab.com>
Date: 6 Aug 90 16:41:11 GMT
References: <812@agcsun.UUCP> <222.26a42b7d@astro.pc.ab.com> <13038@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <294.26b56ac2@astro.pc.ab.com> <1030@pi19.pnfi.forestry.ca>
Lines: 37


 
> I'm fairly new to C++ and often find myself struggling with the "old ways" 
> while trying to implement the new.  This often occurs when I need to do some 
> rather simple task that, by appearances is unique to the situation at hand.  
> I'm wondering if others have run into this problem and do you solve them by 
> writing straight C to solve these problems or is there a better way.
> 
> An example of this came up the other day.  I needed to read a simple text 
> file.
> Each line needed to be parsed and actions taken elsewhere in the program 
> depending upon what was found.  Of course this problem is trivial but it 
> serves as an example.  Should I write a class to do this?  Should the class 
> be a text file class, a "line" class, a parse class, ... ???  Since the 
> parse is unique (I was looking for two different words) should I build a 
> virtual class and derive something unique to that parse or pass the two 
> words to a more general parse class?  Possibly you can see why I'm doing
> so much head scratching.  All of these solutions would require me to write 
> a lot more code than the simple, unique parse function required in ANSI C.  
> That's ok if I end up with something re-usable but I have a hard time 
> "seeing" that in cases like this.  Any edification you could give a an 
> old evolutionary biologist who's strugglng to learn this new paradigm would 
> be appreciated.
> 
> Larry Marshall
> Petawawa National Forestry Institute
> Chalk River, Ontario K0J 1J0

	The above phenomena is not unique.  The paucity of good stable C++
	class libraries has often been cited as one of the difficulties of
	learning OOPs with C++ and is a prime
	example of why some institutions are requiring people who want to
	develop in C++ to first become familiar with OOP via Smalltalk.  The
	Smalltalk class library provides a good library of examples of how the
	C++ classes might be organized for a particular function.  The best C++
	programmers I know learned OOP from Smalltalk initially and then
	transfered their experiences to C++.