Thread: general question

Originally Posted by Elysia

Type safety, generic programming facilities, abstraction.
And once more, the kernel is just built using year-old technologies, so it doesn't support any modern technologies. The foundation is flawed.
That doesn't mean C++ is at fault - it means the foundation is.

I don't think we can say that Linux or Windows is FLAWED because it is written in C. But neither can we say that C++ would make that task impossible.

Designing an OS is difficult. Using C or C++ is a small matter in the whole process. But once you go down the line of using one, it's pretty darn difficult to change that decision without major upheaval of API's and such. This is the major reason why there's no immediate projects to modify Linux or Windows to use C++ instead of C. The whole OS has to be designed that way initially.

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Mats

I did not mean to imply it is flawed because it uses C.
I mean to imply that if a kernel cannot support C++ code, then its foundation is flawed in such a way that it cannot use C++. But it doesn't necessarily mean it's a BAD foundation, because that is a design choice - shall we build it for C++ support or for C support only?
The Windows and Linux kernels aren't flawed; at the time they were built, there was only C - and so they made a design decision to only support C.
The point is, again, that C++ isn't suited for this kind of job - the kernel (Windows, Linux) wasn't designed for C++!

Flawed is a rather odd word to use. Is it a flaw that I can't program the kernel in BASIC? Is it a flaw that I can't program it in ALGO? Not the best word choice, in my opinion.

It's not a flaw that I can't use tractor tires on my car. It just isn't designed to fit that size of tire.


Quzah.

I didn't exactly find the right words, either, though...

Originally Posted by matsp

Of course, if you are NOT using object oriented style or any other feature of C++, then C++ is just a bigger C compiler. And there is no point in that.

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Mats

Actually, you can use C so, that you'll achieve the basic princibles of object oriented coding. (Except proper encapsulation perhaps).

But I know some embedded platform SW written in C++ too. And it is not that terribly after all - although I would rather see C. But to answer to the original questions, C is far from obsolete, and at least where I studied at university, there was far too little courses based on C. It was all java and some C++ :/

Originally Posted by Maz

Actually, you can use C so, that you'll achieve the basic princibles of object oriented coding. (Except proper encapsulation perhaps).

Of course, but it's error prone and tedious still.
C++ lends itself naturally to such things and it's less error prone which is why it is to prefer.

But I know some embedded platform SW written in C++ too. And it is not that terribly after all - although I would rather see C. But to answer to the original questions, C is far from obsolete, and at least where I studied at university, there was far too little courses based on C. It was all java and some C++ :/

I would like to see more universities teach C++ instead of C.
Too many people around here who pick up C and basically get stuck on everything.
Of the many C++ posts, many of them are of design problems rather than fundamentals.
In short, there are too many people learning C, and too many I assume think it's the language of choice for any type of program (ie they haven't heard of C++, Java or any other high-level language).
Actually, I would like to see an introductory course to programming where students have the ability to specialize in a language later in the course, rather than free course, where students obviously not always know what to pick.

Ah yes, what would we do without these ever popular LanguageX is better than LanguageY threads?


Quzah.

Originally Posted by Elysia

Of course, but it's error prone and tedious still.
C++ lends itself naturally to such things and it's less error prone which is why it is to prefer.

Yes. It is error prone, but fully doable. And at times even usefull.
And maybe I did not write my thoughts behind the sentence well enough. Many (C++ - abd other) programmers make quite a fuss about OOP. One can at times get a feeling, that OOP is THE purpose, OOP itself is often told to be the justification to use OOP.

How ever, I have found out that people often overdo things with OOP. Too deep going inheritance may lead to situations, where at top level we redo things done at bottom classes.. It's kind of an onien effect. In my experience OOP can be a good tool at times, but yes, you can go terribly wrong with OOP. Sometimes it feels that the porpose of OOP coders is just to find out a new nifty OOPism... Sometimes things are just simpler to do with procedural languages. And C (as C++) allow writing both OOP and procedural code, however C++ coders are often so deep in their OOP thingking, that they cannot see the wood due to the forest...

Originally Posted by Elysia

I would like to see more universities teach C++ instead of C.
Too many people around here who pick up C and basically get stuck on everything.
Of the many C++ posts, many of them are of design problems rather than fundamentals.
In short, there are too many people learning C, and too many I assume think it's the language of choice for any type of program (ie they haven't heard of C++, Java or any other high-level language).
Actually, I would like to see an introductory course to programming where students have the ability to specialize in a language later in the course, rather than free course, where students obviously not always know what to pick.

In my experience, yes. C may be hard at first. Beginner surely does mistakes with inputs, loop indexes and so on. (But they may well do same mistakes with C++, and in addition to that, there's whole bunch of things that can go wrong with Cpp). Maybe so many beginners indeed post their problems at C forums, because they have started with C. But would they do perfect code right away if they had started with C++? No.

And to go a bit further. C is simpler than C++. Significantly. In an year or two, a guy with normal brain capacity will learn the princibles of C. They will surely need to learn things about OSes and libraries, but they already know C. However even 10 years will not teach you all the tedious bits in C++. There's multibillionskillion ways to mess the design, and go wrong with "oh so admired" inbuilt OOP support.

(personal opinions - everybody can have their own )

Originally Posted by Maz

Yes. It is error prone, but fully doable. And at times even usefull.
And maybe I did not write my thoughts behind the sentence well enough. Many (C++ - abd other) programmers make quite a fuss about OOP. One can at times get a feeling, that OOP is THE purpose, OOP itself is often told to be the justification to use OOP.

How ever, I have found out that people often overdo things with OOP. Too deep going inheritance may lead to situations, where at top level we redo things done at bottom classes.. It's kind of an onien effect. In my experience OOP can be a good tool at times, but yes, you can go terribly wrong with OOP. Sometimes it feels that the porpose of OOP coders is just to find out a new nifty OOPism... Sometimes things are just simpler to do with procedural languages. And C (as C++) allow writing both OOP and procedural code, however C++ coders are often so deep in their OOP thingking, that they cannot see the wood due to the forest...

True. That is a fault everyone makes.
OOP has its purposes, just as procedural programming does.
But just as C++ programmers sometimes go too deep with OOP, C programmers sometimes make things too complicated.
No one is perfect.

In my experience, yes. C may be hard at first. Beginner surely does mistakes with inputs, loop indexes and so on. (But they may well do same mistakes with C++, and in addition to that, there's whole bunch of things that can go wrong with Cpp). Maybe so many beginners indeed post their problems at C forums, because they have started with C. But would they do perfect code right away if they had started with C++? No.

They tend to get stuck more on the design rather than getting basic programs working...
Sometimes it might just be that they try to make their programs too flexible - and thus making them overcomplicated.

And to go a bit further. C is simpler than C++. Significantly. In an year or two, a guy with normal brain capacity will learn the princibles of C. They will surely need to learn things about OSes and libraries, but they already know C. However even 10 years will not teach you all the tedious bits in C++. There's multibillionskillion ways to mess the design, and go wrong with "oh so admired" inbuilt OOP support.

There are oh so many pitfalls in coding in C, too. And it's usually full of bugs and pitfalls.
C++ just moves them up to a higher level.
And actually, you don't need a huge understanding of C++ to use it. It doesn't need to take 10 years. I dare say that you can read Accelerated C++ and start using it right away.

Anyway, it's sticks and stones. Some like Higher level, some Lower level, so I'm just saying that this is all subjective.
But the original topic about why C++ isn't used in the Kernel is that the developer or owner is biased ("the crap that is C++").

I know I should've stopped, but I really can't help it.

You wrote that one can quite easily get started with writing C++. It might be true. But I believe same goes with C too.

However what happens to a guy when he starts working in some existing project? First thing he needs to do is usually to look at some existing code. With C, after knowing the fundamentals one can easily follow the code, and see what each function etc do. But with Cpp, if existing code has been written by someone who uses all advanced featuires of C++... Heck, I've been programming quite a few years, but I would propably feel lost if I needed tp investigate code written by some C++ guru with all fancy C++ features.

But as you stated, it really is about personal preferneces. This kind of discussion is almost impossible to have ... objectively

I feel lost whenever I start looking into C code, even though I am good at both C and C++ (even though I rarely do C)