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From: donahue@artecon.artecon.UUCP (Brian D. Donahue)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ vs Objective-C
Message-ID: <604@artecon.artecon.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 21-Sep-87 12:28:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: artecon.604
Posted: Mon Sep 21 12:28:51 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Sep-87 05:34:19 EDT
References: <3405@ece-csc.UUCP> <638@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <1811@watcgl.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: donahue@artecon.UUCP (Brian D. Donahue)
Organization: artecon
Lines: 45

In article <1811@watcgl.waterloo.edu> kdmoen@watcgl.waterloo.edu (Doug Moen) writes:
>csrdi@its63b.ed.ac.uk (Rick Innis, CS4) writes:
>>... I'd also like C++, and may well end up porting
>>that myself, but I've been told that Objective-C is a better language -
>>any versions available?
>
>Strange... My understanding is that C++ is the better language.
>
>I've used C++, but not Objective-C.  I have talked to someone who
>spent a significant amount of time using Objective-C, and who warned
>me against it.  Here are my impressions:
>
>Objective-C is apparently C with Smalltalk code embedded using escape
>sequences.  The problem is that when you program in Objective-C, you
>have to deal with two universes: the C universe, and the Smalltalk universe.

whoa! what universe did your friend come from?  Objective-C is a 
preprocessor that outputs straight C code.  It has nothing to do with
Smalltalk at all (except for object oriented concepts of course).

>    [...]
>
>in a single unified language.  For example, if you want to
>manipulate character strings, you can use either Smalltalk strings or
>C strings; the two kinds of strings obey different rules, and you might
>occasionally have to worry about converting between the two string formats.
>
>C++, on the other hand, is a single unified language.

Umm, I dont think so.  (I think) what youre talking about is the ability
to use Objective-C's string OBJECT vs. a C "string" character pointer.
Yes, they "obey different rules", and yes, you have to worry about
which type you're working with (an id vs. a char * ), but there is nothing
different in C++ to "unify" the language.  You can still declare a 
char * in C++, and you can still have a string class of objects in C++,
and you therefore still have the same problems as with Objective-C.

I dont really have an opinion about which is better C++ or Objective-C,
Smalltalk seems to be alot cleaner than both of them, although I've never
used it  :-}

bd

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Brian Donahue			{seismo, sdcsvax}!esosun!artecon!donahue