[MUD-Dev] Languages

[Caliban Tiresias Darklock]

On Sat, 24 May 1997 11:37:57 PST8PDT, Nathan Yospe <yospe at hawaii.edu>
wrote:

>On Thu, 22 May 1997, Caliban Tiresias Darklock wrote:
>
>:On Thu, 22 May 1997 19:23:19 PST8PDT, Ben Greear
>:<greear at pollux.cs.uga.edu> wrote:
>
>True, but there is no simple way to handle complex polymorphism, or the
>more advanced applications of template libraries. 

Simple ways to handle 'complex' and 'advanced' features strike me as
something of a non-sequitur... and don't particularly strike me as
desirable. On the other hand, I'm not much on the idea of 'one day
everyone will be a programmer'. That's no more true than 'one day
everyone will be an electrician'.

>Its a rather pointless argument, anyway... You'll never convince
>me to go back to C, and I don't really care if you start using C++. This
>is generally the case... you will either end up in a heated, pointless
>argument with members of other code religions, or in vapid agreement with
>members of your own, or being patronized by code agnostics. 

It's just like any other religion... I have mine, you have yours,
neither of us can CONVINCE the other to convert... but of course, we can
exchange information. That's how most of us retain our faith.

>(Yeah, I'm slightly religious. I prefer OO, and use it even with procedural
>languages. I don't do it because procedural is the devil, I do it because
>OO is easier to wrap my brain around. At least for large projects, which
>this mud and most of what I do at work count as.)

True. C has several drawbacks for large projects, and I won't argue
that.

>I think this highlights the difference in styles. The reason I use C++ is,
>when confronted with a large project, I refuse to include any hacks,
>spaghetti, or feature specific code. I can toss off a project like that
>(such as a mud) in C++ in a fourth the time it takes me to do it in C.
>Were I big on hacks, on dirty work, as you put it, I suppose C would be
>more my style. My time in school has yielded no programming skill, that
>was all work and my own time. School yielded some VERY powerful math and
>physics skills. Still continues to do so, and when they get powerful
>enough, I can leave computers behind and work on more important things.

You know, I keep seeing a corollary... people who are either new to
programming, or have a strong background in scientific disciplines that
isn't backed up with college-level programming courses, tend to prefer
OO and C++. On the other hand, within the professional programming
community, everyone has a pet language... usually the first one they
ever did real work in. For me, yes, I'll admit, it was C and assembly.
Just out of curiosity, what is it that *originally* attracted you to
C++? Not why do you *keep* using it, but why did you *start* using it?

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