General Category > Off Topic
Someone is bypassing permissions on the bug tracker!
eRe4s3r:
For me language just needs to compile properly and fail gracefully, when a bracket is open I want to be told where, the line number at least. If a language can't do that, I don't use it.
As you can guess, I don't "code" much ;p
LintMan:
--- Quote from: techsy730 on April 11, 2012, 06:39:22 PM ---
Yea, C has lots of gotchas, and its minimal sanity checking also means it is very easy to mess things up and not know about it for a long time. Also, its single, unified namespace can be a big pain in the but
--- End quote ---
It's not entirely a single unified namespace. Using the static keyword, you can restrict a global variable's scope to the current compilation unit. ie: if you declare
static int temp1;
in multiple .c files, all linked together, then each .c fill will have its own unique temp1 variable. Similarly for functions. So each .c file can essentially have its own namespace (albeit not a conveniently as more modern languages).
--- Quote ---C++ has many of the same gotchas as C does plus like 3 times as many on top of it. C++ is very powerful though.
--- End quote ---
C++ gets a lot of bad rap these days, so let me defend it a bit...
C++ fixes a lot of the basic gotchas of C because it is much more strongly typed. Even if you're writing a straight C program, there's almost no good reason not to compile it as C++ just for the better typing protection.
A lot of C++'s gotchas are because it leans towards "we'll give the programmers the power and flexibility to do almost everything, even if that will also allow them to shoot themselves in the foot" and is also a is a "kitchen sink" language. It layers all sorts of newer concepts (ie: overloading, classes, single AND multiple inheritance, templates) on top of the existing C language, all while retaining 95+% C back-compatibility, keeping all these different programming methodologies viable, and being suitable for adapting to everything from the latest supercomputer down to a real-time embedded soft-core FPGA processor that has only 1 megabyte of RAM and no multithreading or virtual memory.
That last bit is a lot of the reason C++ lacks a lot of the built-in high level features that many other more-focused modern languages have.
Now, my least favorite language that I actually worked with is FORTRAN 77. I had to port a large engineering application written partly spaghetti-style by non-programmers from F77 to C++. GOTO's. No data structures. Nearly everything global. 3-way conditional branching. Specialized math functions that don't exist outside of FORTRAN. What a nightmare.
Hearteater:
Not that I agree with his conclusion, but this article was always pretty interesting to me on C++. And I've used C++ for more than 10 years.
keith.lamothe:
--- Quote from: Hearteater on April 14, 2012, 08:55:36 AM ---Not that I agree with his conclusion, but this article was always pretty interesting to me on C++. And I've used C++ for more than 10 years.
--- End quote ---
That is interesting. I think he does have a point with:
--- Quote ---Empirically, I have found it very difficult to find even experienced C++ programmers capable of correctly writing a simple C++ class containing a pointer.
--- End quote ---
I wouldn't say that's an open-and-shut case for not doing large projects in C++, but if it were me and I had to run something like that, I'd make sure they knew how to use the safer pointer wrappers (no small task) and post signs with "You Write Raw Pointer, We Delete You" in large bold type on the inside and outside of every programmer's door (delivered free of charge as a courtesy to anybody working from home) ;)
I forget if you said; are you writing that procedural-world tactical RPG in C++?
Hearteater:
I'm using C# and XNA. This is actually my first C# project, although I've used enough languages that picking up a new one isn't all that big a deal anymore. So far I've very happy with C#.
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