Re: Why use C++?

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On 12.08.11 07:03, Jed wrote:
> "Dmitry A. Kazakov"<mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>  wrote in message

>> Ada does not have predefined modular types in the package Standard,
>> because
>> any modular type can be constructed using "type T is mod N" construct.
>
> OK, I plainly see what you meant now even without your example. It's
> amazing what a good night's sleep will do. Last night, I was keying-in on
> the word "algebra" too much and it blinded me to the overall meaning.
>
> I'm not sure I'd want that level of flexibility in a language. I think it
> may be too much effort for too little benefit. It seems it may be doing
> something in software that could be supported in hardware but isn't (?).
> Maybe too much of a "purist" approach. I'd need more info about it and be
> convinced it is worth it before I'd put that on my shortlist of
> compelling features for a language to have.

Perhaps it is info if beginners in embedded systems programming
consistently produce much better results (statistics collected
and testedover some 6 years) when they have an expressive  and
likely more intuitive type system for fundamental types.  My guess
is that the absence of representation riddles is a boon.  Put yourself
in the position of a beginner who is woken up at 5p.m. They would not
recall the rules regarding enum vs int, or the collection of traditional
idioms for declaring arrays in C, autotruncation of numeric values
to fit in the space of LHS; and likely neither the more modern
classes addressing hardware things.
   Then, will understanding the type declarations

    type Intensity is range 0 .. 255;
    for Intensity'Size use 8;
    type RGB is (Red, Green, Blue);
    type Pixel is array (RGB) of Intensity;

require much besides what is written?   Compare

    #define RGB_LIMIT 3

    typedef unsigned char Intensity;
    enum RGB {Red, Green, Blue};
    typedef Intensity Pixel[RGB_LIMIT];

and

   switch (1) {
   case 0: break;
   case CHAR_BIT == 8: break;
   }

somewhere.  If I am a beginner, what is the number of technicalities
I must know it order to understand the second way of declaring things?
(I'll leave out that the declare-like-used rule in typedef is
confusing many. Maybe that's because the typdef-ed name isn't in some
fixed position in the typedef.)