From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1108a1,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid1108a1,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: fac41,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidfac41,public X-Google-Thread: f43e6,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gidf43e6,public X-Google-Thread: 114809,b87849933931bc93 X-Google-Attributes: gid114809,public From: Bertrand Meyer Subject: Re: What is wrong with OO ? Date: 1997/01/23 Message-ID: <32E7F7D5.15FB7483@eiffel.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 211891571 references: <32D11FD3.41C6@wi.leidenuniv.nl> to: Bjarne Stroustrup content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: Interactive Software Engineering Inc. mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.lang.eiffel,comp.lang.ada,comp.object,comp.software-eng x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (X11; I; SunOS 4.1.3 sun4c) Date: 1997-01-23T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Bjarne Stroustrup wrote: > C++ use grew > very nicely for years without hype. I base my statement on years of looking > at C++ use, teching, and learning - many of those years were before anyone > was given time off from their day job to learn C++. [...] > [C++] would have died during > the early years where there were essentially no C++ marketing and alternatives > languages with marketing dollars behind them existed. This is really too far off the reality to let pass. Not that I think Bjarne Stroustrup is less than forthcoming; he is undoubtedly sincere in believing that he was a researcher led by purely intellectual motives competing against crass commercialists. From within Bell Labs he may have had that impression. But anyone seeing the real situation in the software world at large could not fail to notice the gigantic amount of both "hype" (his term in the first paragraph) and "marketing" (his term in the second) behind C++. The mere fact that it came from AT&T and was from the start endorsed by other billion-dollar companies was what got the industry to listen. It does not mean that the language was bad (and neither does it mean the reverse) - simply that the quality of the language was, if not completely irrelevant, far secondary to the marketing push. In the field of advanced technology, furthermore, marketing is not just expensive ads in magazines. It is also access of various approaches to scientific conferences and publications. The record of OOPSLA in this respect has been (and continues to be) less than pristine. To put it politely, it has always been made very clear that some approaches were more equal than others. This has had a rather vicious consequence: that people promoting less-hyped and less-politically-correct approaches, coming in many cases from private industry (often precisely because they were more innovative and could not find a hospitable environment in academia or even large corporate research labs) had to resort to the normal, commercial forms of "marketing", thus allowing their better endowed competitors to drape themselves in the mantle of Pure Science and accuse the former of crass commercialism. This is a very effective tactic, and worked quite well in the history of O-O: keeping innovators away from the Establishment, forcing them to go to the commercial sector, and then frowning on them on the grounds of academic impurity. Quite smart. All this being said, I must add that while I am not a great fan of C++ I agree with Bjarne Stroustrup that marketing and hype alone, on any scale, would not by themselves have been able to bring C++ to the level of success that it reached. Clearly, it filled for many people a pressing need at the right time. Although Dr. Stroustrup's second paragraph as quoted above (the point about there being no marketing for C++) does not hold water, the first part (omitted above): [U]nless C++ had at least some of the virtues I claim for it, it would have died during the early years is absolutely correct. To take the first analogy that comes to mind, the Apple Newton is yet one more example that no company, however big, can force on the public a technology that the public does not want. -- Bertrand Meyer, President, ISE Inc., Santa Barbara (California) 805-685-1006, fax 805-685-6869, - ftp://ftp.eiffel.com Visit our Web page: http://www.eiffel.com (including instructions to download Eiffel 4 for Windows)