Re: Java Risks (Was: Ada News Brief - 96-05-24

[Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu>]

Norman,

As you know, I am no advocate of the virtues of C++. However, I do
believe that, if one needed to extend C into a OOP language, the
decision taken by Stroustrop was, if not brilliant (I do tend to
hyperbole sometimes), at least intelligent.

The fact that it can lead to kind of absurdities illustrated in your
response, does not diminish the intelligence of the idea.  It simply
shows that there are ways to corrupt it through misuse. My position
vis a vis C++ has been that it is not well-suited to the development of
software that must work with consistent reliabilty.  And you have shown
an example to support that view.  It is unfortunate that C++ is so
vulnerable to exposure from such examples.  And it gets worse as new
features are added.  In particular, the exception handling in C++ is
a rather sad sight to behold.

On 3 Jun 1996, Norman H. Cohen wrote:

> In article <Pine.GSO.3.92.960602134300.12386C-100000@nunic.nu.edu>,
> Richard Riehle <rriehle@nunic.nu.edu> writes:
>
> |>    There are aspects of C++ that, as orginally  conceived by Dr.
> |>    Stroustrup, make very good sense.  The fundamental idea of
> |>    expanding the stuct into a class was a stroke of brilliance.
>
> I disagree.  It is the confusion of classes and structs (along with the
> confusion of class-as-type-definition and class-as-module) that leads to
> absurdities such as the following:
>
>    class C {
>       protected:
>          typedef ... T;
>          static T x;  // perfectly legal
>          struct S {
>             T x;      // illegal: protected "member" T inaccessible inside
>          } y;         //    a struct, despite nesting.
>    }

  OK, so my langauge is a little exagerrated sometimes.  I do think it was
  kind of a smart idea, even though it does lend itself to the kind of
  corrupt thinking illustrated in this example. In all honesty, very few
  C++ programmers would design a class with such an obviously ugly
  profile.

  All in all, thanks for a rather amusing example, though.

  Richard Riehle