Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!faline!ulysses!allegra!princeton!udel!gatech!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Object-oriented programming and the X toolkit
Message-ID: <19122@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 23 Jan 88 17:19:55 GMT
References: <8801230105.AA28529@gilroy.dec.com>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 21
Posted: Sat Jan 23 12:19:55 1988
In-reply-to: joel@DECWRL.DEC.COM's message of 23 Jan 88 01:05:33 GMT
Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.41.4 of Mon Mar 23 1987 on bu-cs (berkeley-unix)


From: joel@DECWRL.DEC.COM
>As the one who gave the X toolkit its object-oriented flavor, I understand and
>sympathize with the trepidations expressed by S. Chu and K. Kimbrough.  Yes,
>it is all done by convention; no, C doesn't help a bit.  As I stated at my
>talk, I wouldn't choose C as the first choice for any programming task.  The
>lack of type-checking causes me to waste large amounts of time when I actually
>try to debug my C code, and waste even more time if I have to change a
>parameter list.  (Don't even mention lint, or I start foaming at the mouth.) 
>But there are certain unavoidable facts of life to be considered.
...
>I find programming anything in C painful...

Not a flame, but I find this deeply disturbing. Perhaps this is why a
person like myself who doesn't bat an eye at coding most anything in C
took one look at the toolkit and just said "Gak! Who designed this?!"

I suppose this will be followed up with the now familiar "you're lucky
you got anything" response...

	-Barry Shein, Boston University