Re: Admiral Tuttle (Should be silent ad for Oracle)

[louie!hercules.cis.udel.edu!carroll@louie.udel.edu (Mark C. Carroll)]

In article <9307090525.aa28379@dsc.blm.gov> cjames@DSC.BLM.GOV (Colin James 062
1) writes:
>The extent of the misinformation about C++, for example, has now
>infiltrated AT&T's C courses where it is now taught that C++ IS a
>compiler (it's a precompiler that churns out C code with no regard
>to the C compiler backend) and that C++ makes faster running code
>than C (it does not because anything done in C++ can be programmed
>to run faster in C).

Sorry. I couldn't let this foolishness go unanswered.

C++ _is_ a full compiler. You're defining compiler in an obfuscatory
way... C++ is a compiler that uses C as a portable assembly language
for code generation. It's no less a compiler than anything else; it
does a lot more than simple preprocessing: full semantic analysis and
optimization. Further, many of the  commercial C++ compilers have
gone ahead and used assembly as the target language.

Further: C++ _can_ generate faster code than C. The C++ language
provides stronger typing, which allows the optimizer to determine more
information about the code, which can be used in optimization to
generate better code.

Finally: the statement that "anything done in C++ can be programmed
faster in C" is utter foolishness. Anything that can be done in C can
be done in exactly the same way in C++, with the compiler generating
the exact same target code.

If you want to criticize C++, there are a LOT of terrific reasons to
criticize it. If you want to claim that Ada is a better language than
C++, you can certainly back that claim up with a lot of
evidence. There's no need to resort to this kind of foolishness,
making stupid, false claims against C++ to back up your opinion.


-- 
|| Mark Craig Carroll: <MC>     ||"We the people are getting tired of your lies
|| CIS Grad, Univ of Delaware   || We the people now believe that it's time
|| PGP key available by finger  || We're demanding our rights to the answers
|| carroll@udel.edu             || We elect a precedent to state of mind"-Fish