Re: C++ usage (was Re: ada and robots)

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@shellx.best.com>]

On 24 Jun 1997, Jon S Anthony wrote:
> Simply that there are even simple management/economic reasons why C++
> is not a rational choice.  The really odd thing is that IME I've seen
> people actually admit this was true (that an alternative would
> actually make more sense all around), but then choose C++ anyway
> "because that is what is being used in the industry".  That's
> basically irrational.

In other words, people who had the choice admit that they made what they 
thought (before they committed) was the wrong choice? 

I'd be curious about the management/economic issues you cite. The more ammo
the better.
 
> > Sure. If I had my way, I'd never write another line of C++. I suppose 
> > Eiffel and OCAML programmers might say the same thing about Ada ;-)

> :-).  CL or ST more likely (actually I don't know OCAML - I presume it
> is functional?)  OTOH, I know a number of Lisp types who don't view
> Ada as something that sucks.  They wouldn't exactly jump at the chance
> to program in it, but they see its merits.  C++ they simply disdain...

Understandable that they might feel that way, as programming in Lisp is 
far different from programing in Ada. Lisp environments tend to really 
support an exploratory style of programming (hacking ;-) which can be 
quite useful at times. 

OCAML, which is a member of the ML family of languages, is an impure  
functional language, like Scheme, which is statically typed, has a module 
system supporting separate compilation, and an object system. Like SML, 
you don't have to explicitly type variables, as the compilers do type 
inference. For long lived code, I'm not so sure this is good, since
explicit types provide documentation for dumber programmers like me. OTOH, 
combined with an interpreter, it feels like an Ada-esque Lisp with its 
static typing. See http://pauillac.inria.fr/ocaml/ for details. 

No, I am not advocating that anyone drop Ada and rush to OCAML or SML
(but you can certainly think about chucking some of those bogus untyped 
scripting languages you use :-) 

> Well, OK you got me.  Still, in general, people wouldn't actually
> suggest using Perl for any sort of large scale programming - would
> they??

Yes. I have talked to members of several commercial projects which use 
Perl for large scale programming. One of them was switching to Java because 
the Perl code had become unmaintainable in their opinion.  

-- Brian