The Future of Compiz In Question

[elanthis]

IMHO most arguments against c++ are generally basing their opinion on past compiler support , it's much better now (although the error messages in some cases could be significantly improved).

Yeah, C++ on Linux/UNIX has a major stigma thanks to GCC's past with constantly changing language support and its ever-breaking C++ ABI. Those days are thankfully long gone, but the foul taste still lingers in some of the older Linux/UNIX users' mouths.

The other half of the C++ hatred is just ignorance and obstinence, really. Linus has his famous mailing list post that people keep quoting as reasons to avoid C++ at all costs, despite the fact that his whole argument comes down to "stupid people write stupid code in C++, so C++ must suck!" By his own logic and by his own complaints against much of the contributed kernel code, C must be an even more horrific language than C++.

C++ isn't the best language for most use-cases, but honestly, here in 2009, I can't think of any reasons to _ever_ prefer C over C++ if you have the choice. And no, language binding modules are not a good reason. Absolutely nothing stops people from writing C modules for Python/Perl/Ruby/whatever in C++. Extern "C" exists for precisely those use cases.

You don't even need to write your code as OO in C++. C++ is NOT an OOP language, it's a multi-paradigm language. If you just want to use some of C++'s features to make your procedural code easier to read and maintain, go for it!

[Ze..]

Uhhh... Lets compare.

C: puts("Hi")
Java: system.output.println("Hi")
C++: std:uts("Hi")

C is leading with 4 chars. The same function in Java is measly 22 chars, and in C++ it's 9 characters. And you were saying about shorter functions?

actually it's puts("Hi") , you don't need the std bit if you put the namespace std; up the top.

btw that's a trivial example and can easily come up with other trivial examples where c++ wins , just look at operator overloading... matrix3 = 2DMatrixPlus(matrix1,matrix2); versus matrix3=matrix1+matrix2;

There are something that c++ buys you like templates , much better type safety and streams and it's only getting better with c++0x which adds some nice features.

Then we've got the fact that the speed arguments for c++ are bullshit.

A lot of folks use function pointers and structs to emulate objects , then we've got the whole mess with frameworks like GObject.

The fact is that object oriented code in c++ is more readable than object oriented code in c.

Yes you can write hard to read c++ but you can also write hard to read c.

IMHO most arguments against c++ are generally basing their opinion on past compiler support , it's much better now (although the error messages in some cases could be significantly improved).

[energyman]

and how many headers do you have to include in your c app?

[curaga]

Uhhh... Lets compare.

C: puts("Hi")
Java: system.output.println("Hi")
C++: std:uts("Hi")

C is leading with 4 chars. The same function in Java is measly 22 chars, and in C++ it's 9 characters. And you were saying about shorter functions?

[elanthis]

Eww. Please tell what is good in OO. Having to type 10x longer function names just to get anything done clearly affects production rates.

What? OO-style languages usually _reduce_ the length of function call code... at absolute worst, it should be almost same as in procedural-style C code. If you're writing OO code in any sane language that's making things much longer than the C equivalent then you're doing something really off the wall.

That said, Obj-C is probably not the best bet for a low-level component like the X server. It's a relatively dynamic language and incurs a lot of overhead on method calls compared to something like C or C++. (C++ has no additional overhead compared to C for non-virtual method calls, and its implementation of virtual methods is essentially identical to any C code that uses a shared struct of function pointers -- and you can implement any other style of virtual methods in C++ but do it with a shorter and easier calling convention than C would require.)

Here I was thinking this was 2009 and that irrational fear of anything non-C was long dead.

[curaga]

Eww. Please tell what is good in OO. Having to type 10x longer function names just to get anything done clearly affects production rates.

[spykes]

And Objective C ?

[energyman]

because python is dead slow - and not everybody likes forced formatting?

[spykes]

If you want oo - why not use an oo language in the first place ?

What about python instead of C++ then ?
Let the core program being written in C, and do the UI design using Python.

Anyway, I don't think that the size of Glib and/or bad code has something to do with the language itself.
It's as easy (if not easier) to write crap using C++.

[energyman]

Well I am a CS student who really likes C -- OK I guess I can see what you mean buy a true OO language being more suitable for GUI type/desktop work, but IIRC most of GNOME is in C, so I guess it's not total insanity is it?

Also, I don't believe lack of competence should be a reason to move to another language. Poor C coders will likely make for poor Java coders or Python coders for non-trivial and non-toy applications. Surely a poor C coder will make a poor C++ coder as well. There is definitely a place for languages that make things easier, but I don't think the rationale should be to encourage poor coders to get involved in a project.

yes, gnome is written in C because 'more people know C' - and they jump to a lot of hoops to implement OO in C. That alone explains some of the size and uglyness of glib and gtk. It is pretty much a mess.

If you want oo - why not use an oo language in the first place?