Re: True faiths ( was Re: The true faith )

[kaz@accton.shaw.ca (Kaz Kylheku)]

In article <bruce-4C4B58.08364919012002@news.paradise.net.nz>, Bruce
Hoult wrote:
>And the really really scary thing is that I know C++ well enough to know 
>why I need an assignment operator, and know how to write it correctly 
>off the top of my head (and with the inherited:: call inside the 
>try{}!).  Most C++ places that I've worked I'm the *only* person who 
>would get this right.

Most C++ programmers I have come across know only an imaginary, simplified
dialect of C++ that they have assembled from various incorrect sources,
and compiler-specific reference. It is my experience that attitudes
toward standards and language specifications in general tend to be very
poor among C++ users.

There is a lot of literature written by idiots and for idiots, purportedly
about C++, but really about a simplified dialect having little to do with
C++. The literature about languages which are not hyped up tends to be of
a much higher quality. The result is that if you typical C++ programmer
comes across a textbook about some programming language (like say one of
the ones in the Newsgroups: line) that language seems incredibly difficult
compared to the simplified language that he misunderstands C++ to be.

He doesn't understand that half of his code is not even portable to
the compiler he developed it with, but works only by fluke, and that if
he were to get it right, he would have to work in a much more complex
programming language, namely the real C++.