Re: Desirability of C++

[Ole-Hjalmar Kristensen <ohk@clustra.com>]

Gautier <gautier.demontmollin@maths.unine.ch> writes:

> Hyman Rosen:
> 
> > What does that mean? C++ functions can return things other than integers
> > and pointers, and there is a simple way in C++ to make arrays with bounds
> > but no OO bloat.
> 
> Sorry if I'm wrong - maybe it is the over-abundance of C-like sources.

You can do it in C as well. Example

typedef struct foo{
  float re;
  float im;
}foo;

foo bar(){
   foo foo1;
   return foo1;
}

> Is there an online, HTML ISO standard reference ?
> For the arrays, I'd really like to see the way you program things like
>   "procedure Some_algo( A: matrix; x: out vector; b: vector ) is..."
> with "A'range(1)" and so on, with possibility of having bound checking on.
> 

No luck with range checking or array bounds, you have to use vector
classes to get that.

> > While C++ syntax can sometimes be abysmal, I am 100% convinced that the
> > main reason for the lack of Ada's popularity is its Pascal-derived syntax.
> 
> Hum... and how do you explain the huge popularity of Turbo/Borland Pascal ?
> The lack of Ada's popularity until the past few years (thanks to GNAT) is
> rather due to the refrigerating effect of the policy the DoD had - IMHO.
> And the fact Ada came too early for the 16-bit, low Mhz personal computer wave.
> 

It was cheap, very fast compile times, IDE, produced reasonable code,
and had extensions to standard Pascal which made it useful. The fact
that it was Pascal did not matter much, I think.
BTW., personally I don't care whether you write {} or BEGIN/END.

> About syntax: I think it's rather a question of personal taste and practice.
> 
> Is it worse to have the eye swimming from an ill-formatted over-uppercased
> Ada source than from a mass of {&*^++[) spotted among tricky identifiers and
> some comments trying to half-hide, half-explain what happens on the left ?
> 
> Simply, there is a great variety of writing styles, in C, Ada,.... There are
> Fortran-like Ada sources, Pascal-like C or Fortran sources, and so on...
> 
> _____________________________________________
> Gautier  --  http://members.xoom.com/gdemont/

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