Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!tikal!hplsla!jima
From: jima@hplsla.HP.COM (jim adcock )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Operator overloading harmful (good criticism, bad example)
Message-ID: <6590003@hplsla.HP.COM>
Date: 13 Jan 88 21:23:16 GMT
References: <250@vsi1.UUCP>
Organization: HP Lake Stevens, WA
Lines: 59


>     i = d[ a + b * c ];
> 
>     What does it do?


*** SIGH ***

Hopefully, what it does is assign i the value of the (a plus (b times c))'eth
element of d.  If not, it was probably written by a brain dead programmer.

Would you RATHER try to maintain a program consisting of thousands of lines
of the following type of code ???

    assign(i,index(d,sum(a,product(b,c)))); 
    
I've certainly seen PLENTY of code of the above variety, simply because 
MOST languages have NO OTHER WAY to express math formulas on anything
more complicated than a floating point number.

WHICH code do YOU believe is more likely to have the BUG in it in the FIRST
place, the line of code using standard math symbols, or the line of code
consisting soley of "prose" descriptions?

WHICH code do YOU believe would be faster and easier to write?

C++ allows standard mathematical intuition with regards to mathematical
formulas to be applied to things more complicated than floating point
numbers -- complex numbers, vectors, matrices, sparse arrays, etc, etc.

-- I believe the goal of C++ is to allow GOOD programmers to write GOOD code --

In my experience, when you take inexperienced programmers, and put them
onto a good language, MOST tend to rise to the occasion, and write code
at the quality level that the language allows.  I believe most programmers
WANT to do a good job.  It's the butting you head against a language that 
doesn't ALLOW good programming that leads to the bad code, because then
programmers give up in frustration, and crank out any old style code.

In any case, it will be good code, written by good programmers, that will tend
to survive and propagate over the years, serving as example for future
C++ programmers.

Certainly, I share your fears that until a volume of C++ programs develop, 
such that the C++ community starts to form a natural consenses as to what
represents "good" C++ programming style, until then there ARE going to be some
pretty weird examples of people going off the deap end, using C++ features
in some pretty bizarre ways.  But I have no doubt that the C++ community
will recognize these efforts for the garbage that they truly are.

For me, a bigger concern than the people who might overload "+" to mean
"So Fred, wanna havva pizza for lunch" are the people who are blindly
trying to force C++ programming into a Smalltalk-like mold.  I am far 
from convinced that the Smalltalk-style of object oriented programming
truly represents the direction that the C++ community should head towards.

[[I won't even MENTION what I think about people who hack cfront !!!]]

"Fool-proof tools are only fit for use by fools"