Who needs C++

I don't really like C++ although I've done my share of object oriented programming. My target languages for that, however, have been Java, D and even python. I do far more programming in C however, because I write a lot of numeric, math oriented software. C has a lot of limitations of course in terms of rapid prototyping, memory management and a lack of modern language constructs. C++, however, IMHO, suffers by being overly complex, difficult to understand and often the execution model, how it actually get's translated to machine code and what the actual program control structure is, is highly obfuscated. (Just watching all the crap that gets called behind the scenes for simple memory management is an eye opener.)

So what are the real alternatives to a serious programmer who doesn't want to use C++, but likes the efficiency of C? After playing around with various development models I have come to find that the paradigm used in gaming development these days is quite powerful. The low level, number crunching code is written in C or even assembler and the high level logic and configuration logic is often left to an embedded scripting language such as lua. Lua is particularly nice for this, since it is easy to understand, powerful, reasonably fast, good for managing configuration tables (for which it was originally designed) and easily embedded since it is a modest size pure ANSI C program. Moreover with automatic interfacing tools such as SWIG, it's particular easy to marry the two languages.
http://www.swig.org/

For desktop applications I've also used Haskell as the high level language since it's actually quite efficient, and thus only requires the most low level number crunching to be performed in C and it has a nice C interface (though it has a terrible learning curve for those coming from C like languages.). So my question is, is this two language model, a scripting language + C, competitive with development in C++? Since I'm not a C++ programmer per se, I can't really compare the two approaches. I know a lot of this depends on the development environment as well, and perhaps that's where the strength of C++ really lies.

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Originally Posted by SevenThunders

So what are the real alternatives to a serious programmer who doesn't want to use C++, but likes the efficiency of C?

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Hold your nose and do C++ anyway?

I don't have a lot of languages under my belt and resisted C++ for a great length of time. But it does what it says, and over time that tends to win out.

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Originally Posted by Dave_Sinkula

Hold your nose and do C++ anyway?

I don't have a lot of languages under my belt and resisted C++ for a great length of time. But it does what it says, and over time that tends to win out.

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Fair enough. It's pretty easy to get into trouble reinventing the wheel. I just always hold out hope for something better. The cute thing about embedding lua is that you can still claim that your code is 100% ANSI C. That lua stuff is well, just some configuration text files, that's all. (I tried to sell this idea to at least 1 manager a while ago.)

As you said, D...

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Originally Posted by zacs7

As you said, D...

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D is compelling. A native debugger would help however. I've also managed to mess myself up pretty badly in D because it's just too darn powerful. I went crazy with templates and mixins to try to achieve generic programming and wound up with something I couldn't debug if my life depended on it. It was one of those complex, self-referential tree like data structures, with a bunch of extra metrics hanging around to do some interesting optimizations. I ended up rewriting it in C and simplifying the algorithm a bit. The C has been unpleasant, but the debugging quite a bit more pleasant.

M$ needs C++ :), in fact their kernel contains a lot of C++ (70% or something)
has been unpleasant, but the debugging quite a bit more pleasant.
Anyway, I dislike C++ and have just stuck with C (after moving from C++ back to C). However I find a growing number of opensource projects are in C++, especially games or GUIs. But I find C does everything I want it to (sometimes inline asm is required, but hey!). So in conclusion to my ramblings, your looking for a language other than C++?

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Originally Posted by zacs7

M$ needs C++ :), in fact their kernel contains a lot of C++ (70% or something)
has been unpleasant, but the debugging quite a bit more pleasant.
Anyway, I dislike C++ and have just stuck with C (after moving from C++ back to C). However I find a growing number of opensource projects are in C++, especially games or GUIs. But I find C does everything I want it to (sometimes inline asm is required, but hey!). So in conclusion to my ramblings, your looking for a language other than C++?

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I'm looking for an efficient programming paradigm. I include C, since it's hard to argue with the existing C infrastructure. (ie sell it to your boss or your client or your customer etc.) I have heard lots of hype about other languages and how productive they are, from lisp, eiffel, smalltalk and the various functional programming languages, but they tend to have a somewhat smaller user base and support group and they face a lot of resistance from people who hire software engineers (e.g. M$). It is a heck of a lot easier to do most programming tasks in Python, for example than it is in C. My experience with a scripting language targeting scientific programmers (Matlab) is that it is nearly a factor of 10 times faster to develop in Matlab than C (and it's probably 10 times slower to run!). The reason is due to a lot of built in specialized libraries, a lot of concise high level abstractions, immediate feedback from the interpreter without the compile and run cycle needed in C and the availability of a garbage collector to do your memory management.

Well I'd like that kind of productivity as well as having the performance. That's why a mixed paradigm can get me part of the way there. Do the high level stuff in lua or python or Haskell et. al. and just use C when I need to optimize. It has worked for me on a couple of large projects.

D is kind of interesting in that it's performance is competitive with C, it has just as many libraries as C does and a few more (it can call C libraries directly) and it has garbage collection. What it lacks is an interpreter and a debugger. Interestingly there are C interpreters, with Ch probably being the most highly developed. It's actually pretty productive if you know your C and has a garbage collector I believe. It's fatal flaw is that it has a horribly complicated binary interface to compiled C code and C libraries. Some attempt has been made to automate this, but it falls short I'm afraid.

There is also the Hans Boehm garbage collector, written in C. Using that makes coding in C quite a bit easier, however there are potential issues for real time applications and as of yet there are no 64 bit versions for windows.

Ewww, what kind of a life form would revert back to C from C++, when you actually have a choice?

No references - Eeek!
No operator overloading - Egad!
No exceptions - Oh teh noes!
No templates - Oh crap!
No RAII - OMFG!
No std library - AAARGH!
I can't take it any more ... Somebody make this madness stop!

Seriously, who wants to go back to the dark ages?!


Yes D is beginning to look quite attractive... Someone just needs to write a nice IDE and debugger like MSVC++.
Or Delphi FTW!

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Originally Posted by iMalc

Ewww, what kind of a life form would revert back to C from C++, when you actually have a choice?

No references - Eeek!

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We have pointers. Just as functional, although slightly less convenient from a syntactic standpoint.

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No operator overloading - Egad!

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It's not object oriented -- this is just the way it is.

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No exceptions - Oh teh noes!

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We have setjmp/longjmp.

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No templates - Oh crap!

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Macros can be used quite creatively.

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No RAII - OMFG!

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Why not? Specify the interface however you want.

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No std library - AAARGH!

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WHAT? No standard library in C? That's purely insane.

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Seriously, who wants to go back to the dark ages?!

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If you can't write functional code without the features of C++, that's a deficiency of your skills, not the language you use. You should be able to make the machine do what you want regardless of the language forced on you.

Me thinks your a Windows programmer then?

For starters I was doing a lot of kernel recompiling at the time, it's nothing to do with the dark ages.

There are plenty of D IDEs (no dedicated ones I know of however).

Where do you think the C++ standard library came from...? cstdio, cstdlib... the list goes on.

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Originally Posted by iMalc

Ewww, what kind of a life form would revert back to C from C++, when you actually have a choice?

No references - Eeek!
No operator overloading - Egad!
No exceptions - Oh teh noes!
No templates - Oh crap!
No RAII - OMFG!
No std library - AAARGH!
I can't take it any more ... Somebody make this madness stop!

Seriously, who wants to go back to the dark ages?!


Yes D is beginning to look quite attractive... Someone just needs to write a nice IDE and debugger like MSVC++.
Or Delphi FTW!

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It's kind of funny but, I'd actually prefer to program in a good macro assembler than in C. It's just that assembly isn't portable. The performance and the complete control you have over the machine is quite compelling. Higher level constructs are possible with a good library (e.g. http://webster.cs.ucr.edu/AsmTools/HLA/index.html)

I also prefer programming at the complete other end of the spectrum, in python, ruby or in a functional programming language like Haskell. In Haskell there are abstractions that you could only dream about in C++ or even D. Class types, high order functions, currying and parameterized types are quite a bit more powerful and expressive than object orientation, but that's a whole other debate topic.

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Originally Posted by SevenThunders

I also prefer programming at the complete other end of the spectrum, in python, ruby or in a functional programming language like Haskell. In Haskell there are abstractions that you could only dream about in C++ or even D. Class types, high order functions, currying and parameterized types are quite a bit more powerful and expressive than object orientation, but that's a whole other debate topic.

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Why do we have to debate it at all? It's all just programming. If you love Python, more power to you -- it's my favorite language, and having programmed in C for over 15 years, that's saying a lot. But it's just a programming language for crying out loud...

Some people just haven't seen the light...

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

Why do we have to debate it at all? It's all just programming. If you love Python, more power to you -- it's my favorite language, and having programmed in C for over 15 years, that's saying a lot. But it's just a programming language for crying out loud...

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For me I just want to find out what works for other folks. How are they productive? Is there a way to do this stuff better and faster? It's a legitimate question and not necessarily just a matter of opinion. There have been some studies done which justify your use of Python as a way to improve productivity and correctness. I've had the pleasure in recent years of working on an unbelievably complex system that delivers broadband wireless internet to the home. There were plenty of difficult signal processing, hardware, DSP and other issues to overcome. But what was consistently the schedule drag and highest risk component of the whole project? The multi-million line control software, MAC layer and above, that ran the system. Moreover the software sucked up the most man years, even though initially we thought our design was really about featuring our cool algorithms and systems engineering smarts.

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Originally Posted by SevenThunders

But what was consistently the schedule drag and highest risk component of the whole project? The multi-million line control software, MAC layer and above, that ran the system. Moreover the software sucked up the most man years, even though initially we thought our design was really about featuring our cool algorithms and systems engineering smarts.

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Sounds like you guys have some serious maintenance issues. Look, I don't want to denigrate your abilities or anything, but most code sucks. The language has much less to do with it than the programmers working on the project.

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Originally Posted by brewbuck

Sounds like you guys have some serious maintenance issues. Look, I don't want to denigrate your abilities or anything, but most code sucks. The language has much less to do with it than the programmers working on the project.

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That's OK I didn't write that code :). I did a lot of the algorithm design and signal processing work. I just happen to do a lot of programming as part my job and even sometimes as a hobby or for various research purposes. I happen to believe that the problem is more than just crappy programmers. (Though with the declining standards in education that's a problem too.) Rather I think there is a fundamental flaw in the way people develop software, either in the process that's involved or perhaps the tools themselves.

The complexity of a large project eventual overwhelms an ordinary human, and bugs, sometimes catastrophic can not seem to be avoided. Maybe some of the work done in proving program correctness or automatic test generation can mitigate this, but I'm not so sure. AI was held out as next big thing that was going to revolutionize our lives. However it turned out to be largely a huge disappointment. We still need to hire humans to write software.

What 'bout FORTRAN ? :D!

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Originally Posted by zacs7

What 'bout FORTRAN ? :D!

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Are you serious? Last time I programmed in fortran, I input my program using a stack of punch cards.

I like C++ personally, but i don't have a bunch of experience with other OOP languages so i guess i can't really provide new insight ;)

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Originally Posted by SevenThunders

C has a lot of limitations of course

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Limits? I'd say C is fairly unlimited, rather than limited. Granted, it takes more code to sometimes accomplish what you want, and it might be more complex than other languages, but that's the usual tradeoff you get: simplicity or power.

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...in terms of rapid prototyping, memory management and a lack of modern language constructs.

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Limited memory management? Like what? There's malloc() - what more is there to memory management? If you want something else, like garbage collection, it's probably implemented as a library. (Although I've never really had trouble with keeping track of memory...)

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C++, however, IMHO, suffers by being overly complex, difficult to understand and often the execution model, how it actually get's translated to machine code and what the actual program control structure is, is highly obfuscated. (Just watching all the crap that gets called behind the scenes for simple memory management is an eye opener.)

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..."behind the scenes" is the usual place for complex crap. It'd be a pity if the user had to deal with it...

I used to use C alot, and shunned away from C++. Until I bothered to look into C++, and saw that my C code resembled and used C++ constructs. That, and std::string and std::vector make life so much easier.

Language isn't that important though. Use what works best for the task at hand. I use C++ mainly for applications, although there are times when it isn't appropriate (web) or isn't available (embedded). The benefit of the existance of multiple languages is that we, as programmers, have a wider array of tools to use.

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Originally Posted by Cactus_Hugger

Limits? I'd say C is fairly unlimited, rather than limited. Granted, it takes more code to sometimes accomplish what you want, and it might be more complex than other languages, but that's the usual tradeoff you get: simplicity or power.
Limited memory management? Like what? There's malloc() - what more is there to memory management? If you want something else, like garbage collection, it's probably implemented as a library. (Although I've never really had trouble with keeping track of memory...)

..."behind the scenes" is the usual place for complex crap. It'd be a pity if the user had to deal with it...

I used to use C alot, and shunned away from C++. Until I bothered to look into C++, and saw that my C code resembled and used C++ constructs. That, and std::string and std::vector make life so much easier.

Language isn't that important though. Use what works best for the task at hand. I use C++ mainly for applications, although there are times when it isn't appropriate (web) or isn't available (embedded). The benefit of the existance of multiple languages is that we, as programmers, have a wider array of tools to use.

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Yet one hears arguments about development time, complexity, ease of maintenance, programming habits and so on. As I mentioned, in my field it's about a factor of 10 times faster to develop in matlab and your code has a greater chance of being correct. If Matlab had a compiler that achieved C-like performance, the choice would be a no brainer. Plus you hear stories about how certain languages (say Lisp) has given people a competitive edge.
http://www.xent.com/FoRK-archive/2001.04/0903.html

There have been similar stories about Smalltalk and even a lower level language like Forth. The last two are great for code reuse and code refactoring.

Nothing beats MEL :)

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Originally Posted by h3ro

Nothing beats MEL :)

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Is that used for animation?

nah Fortran has been 'modernized'... This time the stack punch card is on screen ;)

I am a fan of both C and C++, although I use C++ more often because of the higher level constructs that the standard library offers, such as std::vector, etc. Although I could write my own classes for these, I would rather not do so. C doesn't really contain these, and so I tend to use C++ more.

Some of you have mentioned game development, and what they use. I think the best way to really see what professional game developers use is to go to id Software's website and download their code...because yes...they release their code....even to their newest game Doom 3, the code has been released.

If you look at it, you will notice that all their older games (Doom, Quake, Quake 2) all were strictly C. Nothing else was used. I don't think Assembly was even used because they were aiming to release their games for multiple platforms, and Assembly is not portable. So it was all strictly C.

When we arrive at Quake 3 we see a mixture of both C and C++ (if I remember right it was half and half pretty much).

As I look at the Doom 3 code it is almost all essentially C++, although knowing John Carmack and his past experience, I am sure there is loads of C code in those files that are all labeled with .cpp extensions.

Scripting languages do find their use in game development, but not in the core game development. They are often useful for AI.

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Originally Posted by DavidP

even to their newest game Doom 3, the code has been released

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Not for free, I don't think. Not for Doom 3 anyway.

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Originally Posted by SevenThunders

Is that used for animation?

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Its the scripting language used in Autodesk Maya. The language itself is very basic, but it gives you access to all the commands and UI stuff inside of maya except a few. But I guess you can access at least 95%, which makes it useful to write simple scripts to speed up your workflow. But its painfully slow, thats why im trying to learn C++

>Not for free, I don't think. Not for Doom 3 anyway.

Oh yes it has. The engine code has not been released. The game code has been released. It is for free on id Software's website, and that is what I was referring to.

How can you be sure the engine itself isn't entirely in C, and the game is a mix of C/C++ ? :P

I never said anything about the engine code...But I did state that the game code was C++, or at least .cpp files, but probably with a LOT of C mixed in there. Although I did actually download the code and take a pretty good look at it, and it is very nicely object oriented, and there is quite a bit of C++.

But anyways, my point in posting all of that was to respond to the comments that were made such as this:

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After playing around with various development models I have come to find that the paradigm used in gaming development these days is quite powerful. The low level, number crunching code is written in C or even assembler and the high level logic and configuration logic is often left to an embedded scripting language such as lua.

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It's true that scripting languages are used in such programs, but not to the extent implied in that quote.

OK my turn ;)

I have a good friend at universty who loved C++ like me but was really struggling with pointers and claases. I did all I could to explain the concepts to him but he just couldn't get it. I even tried tutoring him privaltely, He thought this was always right:

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cout << * << pointer << ** << " ":

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:o

Madness I know! So after weeks of pursuading him not to quit programming for good as he found everything after functions and program flow to complexing, I managed to talk him into taking a part time C course. Which he is curreently on at the moment. He is doing rather well, and is enjoying it more than the C++ one. I only know basic C concepts myself as Im more C++, but I am able to help him if he gets stuck. So I feel like I acheived somthing in helping him out of a sticky patch in his life.

The whole point of this is, as suggested above, there is no reason why it can be consiered bad to revert from C++ to C. Both langauges are simuilar in concepts ( sort of ) and they use syntax that some people find eaier on C than C++. So if anyone out there is thinking of what kanguage to choose, C or C++, weigh the reasons why you want C++ over C, ( ie: game develi0pment is one ) and select the langauge appripriate. There is also nothing wrong with learning both.

Plus doing quick kernel patches on *nix is a breeze if C is your native language ;)

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Originally Posted by DavidP

Oh yes it has. The engine code has not been released. The game code has been released. It is for free on id Software's website, and that is what I was referring to.

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I couldn't find it on the Id website, but browsing through FTP I found it. I'll have to check that out when I get home.

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There is also nothing wrong with learning both.

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I completely agree. Although I would say C++ is more "native" to me, I know C just as well as I know C++ quite honestly. It is useful to know both, especially since you interleave them and use them interchangeably very often.

[edit]

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I couldn't find it on the Id website, but browsing through FTP I found it. I'll have to check that out when I get home.

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yeah you have to go to the "Technology Downloads" page, and then there should be some link that takes you to the id Software FTP page, and from there you can download it all.

Here is an easier way to get to it all:

http://www.iddevnet.com/

[/edit]

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Originally Posted by SevenThunders

C++, however, IMHO, suffers by being overly complex, difficult to understand and often the execution model, how it actually get's translated to machine code and what the actual program control structure is, is highly obfuscated.

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There are some tricks how C++ gets translated into machine code. Once you've learned the tricks there's not much "highly obfuscated" anymore. :)

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So what are the real alternatives to a serious programmer who doesn't want to use C++, but likes the efficiency of C?

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Who said you need an alternative to C?

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After playing around with various development models I have come to find that the paradigm used in gaming development these days is quite powerful. The low level, number crunching code is written in C or even assembler and the high level logic and configuration logic is often left to an embedded scripting language such as lua.

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At least 3D stuff is mainly done with classes nowadays.

I program in C++, but I don't use much C++-specific stuff. So the result will only have some minor differencies compared to C.

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Originally Posted by swgh

Madness I know! So after weeks of pursuading him not to quit programming for good as he found everything after functions and program flow to complexing, I managed to talk him into taking a part time C course. Which he is curreently on at the moment. He is doing rather well, and is enjoying it more than the C++ one. I only know basic C concepts myself as Im more C++, but I am able to help him if he gets stuck. So I feel like I acheived somthing in helping him out of a sticky patch in his life.

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Yup, low-level stuff usually isn't so complex at all. Some years ago I though about Assembly like "OMG it's the freaking complexx haxxorz code". But actually it is the most logical thing ever. Oh, oops, there's no logic there, there are just instructions - I don't even have to think much (unless I'm trying to reverse engineer it), I just know what each instruction does and there are no gotchas nor side effects.

Now I'm basically more of a reverse engineerer and program "editor". Nothing seems to be more fun to me than "how it's done elsewhere". That's why I visit these forums so rarely lately.

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Originally Posted by iMalc

Ewww, what kind of a life form would revert back to C from C++, when you actually have a choice?

No references - Eeek!
No operator overloading - Egad!
No exceptions - Oh teh noes!
No templates - Oh crap!
No RAII - OMFG!
No std library - AAARGH!
I can't take it any more ... Somebody make this madness stop!

Seriously, who wants to go back to the dark ages?!

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Those things are so useless. If I would have a choice I wouldn't use any of those mentioned features of C++. Luckily I have a choice. Dark ages aka the age when programming was an art. Nowadays' style is blind programming. I admit this stuff can be useful. But the problem is that it is used in too many different places. Different types of programs should have different type of data management. At the moment everything is just mixed together.

Basically if you don't use C++-specific stuff in your program, it's almost the same as C (if not exactly).

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Originally Posted by Cactus_Hugger

Limits? I'd say C is fairly unlimited, rather than limited. Granted, it takes more code to sometimes accomplish what you want, and it might be more complex than other languages, but that's the usual tradeoff you get: simplicity or power.

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Hey! C IS simple :D. Once you have an idea how you're going to do it it's so so simple.

I'm stupid. ;)