Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!mordor!sri-spam!ames!aurora!labrea!decwrl!hplabs!hpcea!hpnmd!hpsrla!hpmwtla!garyb
From: garyb@hpmwtla.HP.COM (Gary Bringhurst)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Re: C vs. Pascal for the mac, vs C for MSDOS
Message-ID: <2270004@hpmwtla.HP.COM>
Date: 1 Feb 88 21:36:04 GMT
References: <697@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Organization: HP MicroWave Technology - Santa Rosa,CA
Lines: 20

>
>C++ provides the sort of strong type checking and modularity
>that Pascal users appreciate so much - it has a notion of
>function prototypes very similar to those in ANSI C.
>In addition, it has the potential to avoid many of the
>problems with existing C implementations. My favorite C
>problem is implementing String255. In C++, a class can be
>defined with the same storage layout as the Pascal String,
>but all of the right semantic properties, and it doesn't
>take pointer magic or kludges or glue or any of the other
>evil stuff that gets in the way of good code.

I'm glad this got into the discussion.  C++ is obviously the language of
choice for real-world tasks _at this time_.  It addresses efficiency issues
with inline functions, and typechecking and other protective features via the
object-oriented extensions.  I heartily endorse the use of C++, until something
better comes along.

Gary Bringhurst

(My opinions are rarely, if ever, those of my employer)