Thread: Questions regarding the text in Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckel

Originally Posted by Elysia

Anyway, I would call it prejudice because Linus simply dismisses C++ without even considering its advantages over C in situations.

Could be. I think perhaps he was being intentionally nasty because there really are people who run around insisting C is "not a modern language" and it's minimalism makes it too difficult to use, and that people who don't understand this are stupid and wrong (the worst examples I've seen of this are not here BTW). You could insist to the author that the linux kernel would be better in pascal or fortran or anything, but if you did that by strongly implying he was stupid and wrong to use an unmodern impossible language, then it's not really surprising that eventually you will get a response like "even if the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C".

In other words, perhaps that prejudice was formed because a skilled and intelligent C++ programmer would not bother harassing the kernel people and calling them fools for not using God's chosen tool, because a skilled and intelligent person knows it ain't true. So those people could really have been producers of crap. Further, since the kernel is not in C++, all of the admirable work he dealt with daily would be in C. So it is self-reinforcing I guess. Probably some inversion of this could be applied to people who work exclusively in a C++ realm.

I think the major reason for the success of linux is together with GNU it provides an open source clone of unix. It and BSD were developed about the same time, but I believe minix was in circulation a few years before that.

@capt.jack: see what a snakepit there is here? People are freaking hilariously territorial about everything. That's what Bruce Eckel is working within, I just wanted to point that out in context. It's like political propaganda written to seduce the innocent/naive.

C++ obsoletes C for certain solutions. C wipes the floor with C++ for others.

And this is only a problem because certain idiots use the wrong logical operators.
i.e. C++ strengths => C sucks. And, C strengths => C++ sucks.

Originally Posted by capt.jack

Richard Stallman..Linus

There's some deeper factors at work there maybe -- at that time RMS was already an infamous iconoclast, very political "on and off the field", whereas Linus was an unknown kid genius. So it makes sense that 1) people who might resent RMS as a poster boy or figure head could still gravitate to a system with LT as a poster boy/figure head, 2) that RMS would grouchily resent this himself

so its better to master 2-3 languages beforehand to be on the safe side

Someone (maybe Salem?) recently posted a link where the author recommended learning six languages and he listed the specific different types he thought were important. I'll be dead by then, but I do think more than one is a good idea. Also, I think getting some deep experience with C would be good for C++ purists, and vice versa.

High level, dynamically typed, object oriented, interpreted languages (perl, python, javascript, etc.) are the tish IMO if you are into C/C++ since they are actually implemented in C (or C++), and have a similar basic schema, but also provide a strong contrast. Once you are free of all the low level issues, clunkiness, and (absurd seeming) type constraints it's pretty amazing what you can accomplish with very concise code who's "elegance" is still in the same realm. That's the only place I would give credit to the idea that you are "freed from having to think about the computer" and can work more abstractly, but it comes at an obvious cost in terms of performance.

Originally Posted by capt.jack

can u please post the link.... i want to have a look at it
thanx

Here it is:

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years