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From: aarsten@idt.unit.no (Amund Aarsten)
Newsgroups: comp.object,comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ and waitresses (long)
Message-ID: <1991May24.205554.10284@ugle.unit.no>
Date: 24 May 91 20:55:54 GMT
References: <2325@media03.UUCP>
Sender: news@ugle.unit.no
Reply-To: aarsten@idt.unit.no (Amund Aarsten)
Organization: Div. of CS & Telematics, Norwegian Institute of Technology
Lines: 30

In article <2325@media03.UUCP>, pkr@media03.UUCP (Peter Kriens) writes:
> Am I alone in that fact that I do not like to chose all the time. I feel
> distracted because I have to spent so much time choosing and then later
> reworking because I made the wrong choice. The language does not seem to have

C++ is a great language when you have a clear idea of what you want to do. To me,
it sounds like you want a prototyping tool, which means you'd probably be better
of with another language (Smalltalk/Lisp/Scheme etc.). C++ is not the best language
for everyone, every language has strong and weak points. For instance, I don't think
Lisp is a very good choice for doing 3D graphics!

All the 'options' are not necessarily a bad thing; to me, it's clearly better to have
choices open than having all the desicions made in advance (in the language), because
the choices made in the language aren't always the right ones for your needs. This
means you end up fighting against the language, which I have been doing in every other language I have used.

As compilers get smarter, one might envision several of C++'s keywords becoming 
obsolete. This has already happened to 'overload'. I wouldn't mind at all having the
compiler figure out which functions need to be virtual, even just the destructors
would be a great releif... However, I don't think C++ ever will become everyone's
programming language (Bjarne Stroustrup mentioned this in a discussion of the future
of computing in BYTE magazine). It is great for systems programming and complex
applications, especially when used with e.g. a UI toolkit.

> way because every time I need to do something usefull, I need downcasting.

If I end up needing downcasting, I rework my design and usually end up with a better
one.

Amund