in reply to Mother of Perl

I am no expert, but the first thing that springs to my mind is objects. The only reason Perl and its cousins would benefit from being implemented in C++ is if that implementation needed to be object oriented. Since each language has it's own OO system, C++ would be overkill, hence C. I would not interpret that as a failure of C++ at all, it's just about taking a the other fork in the road. Besides, what about Objective-C? :)

jeffa

L-LL-L--L-LL-L--L-LL-L--
-R--R-RR-R--R-RR-R--R-RR
B--B--B--B--B--B--B--B--
H---H---H---H---H---H---
(the triplet paradiddle with high-hat)

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Re: Re: Mother of Perl
by blssu (Pilgrim) on Oct 03, 2003 at 14:14 UTC

    Don't sugar coat things. Rejection by large parts of the Open Source community is an indicator of failure.

    C++ is superior to C in every respect except:

    1. portability
    2. transparency (or predictability)

    The first can be fixed. C had *exactly* the same problem and we've managed to live through it.

    The second is the fatal flaw. C programmers do not accept hidden costs. The fundamental C++ idea of hiding behaviors (constructors, destructors, operator overloading, etc.) in backwards compatible C syntax was a mistake.

    Strangely, C++ does not have garbage collection because this is seen as a hidden cost. Manual storage management makes C++ tremendously unappealing to anyone but a C programmer -- but the other hidden costs makes C++ unappealing to C programmers too!

    If C++ had used non-C syntax for the non-C parts of the language, I think it would have completely replaced C.

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