Why is python not written in C++ ?
in [Python]
|
From: Carey Tilden on 2 Aug 2010 20:05 On Mon, Aug 2, 2010 at 3:18 PM, sturlamolden <sturlamolden(a)yahoo.no> wrote: > > Perl is written in C++. That is not enough to make me want to use > it ;) I realize this was meant to be funny, but it's not true, and detracts from the point you were trying to make. Maybe skip the pointless jabs at Perl and stick to things you know more about.
From: Peter on 2 Aug 2010 20:17 On Aug 3, 8:27 am, Paul Rubin <no.em...(a)nospam.invalid> wrote: <snip>... > > Certain folks in the functional-programming community consider OO to be > a 1980's or 1990's approach that didn't work out, and that what it was > really trying to supply was polymorphism. C++ programs these days > apparently tend to use template-based generics rather than objects and > inheritance for that purpose. > > I've never programmed in Ada but I'm intrigued by these articles: > > http://adahome.com/Ammo/cpp2ada.html > http://www.adaic.org/whyada/ada-vs-c/cada_art.html > > I have the impression that Ada has an undeservedly bad rap because of > its early implementations and its origins in military bureaucracy. I'd > certainly consider it as an alternative to C or C++ if I had to write a > big program in a traditional procedural language. I used to work for defence contractors - Ada (IMO :-)) is the very best OO language for real-time and embedded systems. It scales fantastically well to large, multi-platform jobs as well. If I had my way we would use it where I work now (biomedical field) but that isn't an option - too many folk are brought up on a steady diet of C/C++ and therefore don't know any better, plus there is a dearth of Ada compilers for the CPU's that we use here (all embedded work). I have used fortran, C, C++, some Java, Ada (and Python :-)), if I had my choice for the type of programming I do here at work, it would definitely go to Ada by a country mile. Having said that though, I won't replace Python with it on my desktop for the type of stuff I do around the fringes of my job (test scripts etc) and my personal programming :-) But for anyone who wants to expand their horizons, learning Ada would be an excellent choice (although like any learning activity, unless you have a concrete goal in mind you will probably just waste your time :-)). It is not an easy language to just pick up and run with because the strong type-checking FORCES you to think about and design your program very carefully from the very beginning - something that many programmers find an abhorrence for :-) But I always used to tell people - by the time I got a program to compile then I figured 99% of the bugs were already discovered! Try that with C/C++ or almost any other language you care to name :-) Peter
From: Paul Rubin on 2 Aug 2010 20:31 sturlamolden <sturlamolden(a)yahoo.no> writes: > It is annyingly verbose, reminds me of Pascal (I hate the looks of > it), and is rumoured to produce slow bloatware. The earliest Ada compilers were terrible, but they are about like C compilers now, so the output code is ok (see Alioth shootout for example). I agree about the verbosity but I don't think that's too big a problem in the sorts of systems that need to be written in such languages. > And don't forget Ariane 5 ;) I have looked into that a few times and I do wonder whether the language or release process could have been of any help. One possibility is using something like SPARK to ensure the absence of overflow exceptions. Another is automatic test generation something like http://www.stanford.edu/~engler/klee-osdi-2008.pdf but that approach was probably unknown at the time.
From: Roy Smith on 2 Aug 2010 20:47 In article <0ed1fb16-87cb-4fb9-85b2-08d876445d5d(a)q22g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>, sturlamolden <sturlamolden(a)yahoo.no> wrote: > The typical examples revealing incompetence are use of > new[] instead of std::vector To be fair, there were usable C++ compilers before there were usable STL implementations. Thus, it should not be surprising to find older C++ code bases eschewing the use of STL. That's not to say that this trend should be propagated in current educational material. > and dynamic resourse allocation outside contructors. This one I don't understand. Yes, I get RAII, but surely there are valid reasons to allocate memory outside of constructors. Containers which resize themselves (such as std::vector) are one obvious example.
From: Roy Smith on 2 Aug 2010 21:03
In article <i37ire$7gd$1(a)panix5.panix.com>, aahz(a)pythoncraft.com (Aahz) wrote: > http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/98/May/stroustrup.html The same story has been floating around for eons, just with the names changed. I saw one where Wirth was ostensibly making fun of the people who didn't understand that Pascal was all just a joke. I'm sure if you go back far enough, you can find a McCarthy / Lisp version. It probably goes something like, "So, anyway, we tried to figure out what was the most absurd way to abuse punctuation we could imagine. Somebody suggested that every program would have to end with 37 close parentheses. When we finally stopped laughing, we started sketching out a grammar on the chalkboard that would let us do that". |