[comp.lang.c++] C++ too complex!?!?!

bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) (11/01/88)

David Smyth and apparently one or two other people on the net seem to
think that C++ is too complex.  Compared to what?  My suggestion to
these people is to try to learn Russian (2 forms of all verbs, 100 
forms of all motion verbs, 6 declension cases etc. etc.).  Afterwards,
the marvelous simplicity of C++ shall be apparent to them.

Ted Holden
HTE

rob@kaa.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) (11/02/88)

In article <191@imspw6.UUCP> bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) writes:
>David Smyth and apparently one or two other people on the net seem to
>think that C++ is too complex.  Compared to what?  My suggestion to
>these people is to try to learn Russian (2 forms of all verbs, 100 
>forms of all motion verbs, 6 declension cases etc. etc.).  Afterwards,
>the marvelous simplicity of C++ shall be apparent to them.

How many programs have you written/maintained in Russian?

Rob Carriere

eamoore@eamoore.applicon.UUCP (11/08/88)

/* Written  7:27 am  Nov  1, 1988 by imspw6.UUCP!bob in eamoore:comp.lang.c++ */
/* ---------- "Re: C++ too complex!?!?!" ---------- */


David Smyth and apparently one or two other people on the net seem to
think that C++ is too complex.  Compared to what?  My suggestion to
these people is to try to learn Russian (2 forms of all verbs, 100 
forms of all motion verbs, 6 declension cases etc. etc.).  Afterwards,
the marvelous simplicity of C++ shall be apparent to them.

Ted Holden
HTE
/* End of text from eamoore:comp.lang.c++ */

jim@athsys.uucp (Jim Becker) (11/12/88)

From article <31900004@eamoore>, by eamoore@eamoore.applicon.UUCP:
> 
> /* Written  7:27 am  Nov  1, 1988 by imspw6.UUCP!bob in eamoore:comp.lang.c++ */
> /* ---------- "Re: C++ too complex!?!?!" ---------- */
> 
> 
> David Smyth and apparently one or two other people on the net seem to
> think that C++ is too complex.  Compared to what?  My suggestion to
> these people is to try to learn Russian (2 forms of all verbs, 100 
> forms of all motion verbs, 6 declension cases etc. etc.).  Afterwards,
> the marvelous simplicity of C++ shall be apparent to them.
> 
> Ted Holden
> HTE
> /* End of text from eamoore:comp.lang.c++ */

	My parents are both in their sixties, and are both learning
Russian.  They are making good progress. I don't think that I could
ever teach them how to use an IBM PC though, there is just so much
that you have to learn to get going. But I assume that they could
learn the Mac, given the inclination.

	This is a restatement of my big argument, is C++ intended to
be a tool that makes application development easier for the novice,
or simply more concise for the expert? There are certain languages,
such as Pascal, that make structured programming and other good 
techniques come more naturally than other alternatives, such as
fortran. (Hey, I LIKE Fortran). The experience that I have with
seeing programmers use C++ is that there is more rope than in other
languages for their own hanging. It's easier for programmers to write 
difficult to understand logic flow control in C++ than in C; one
can always pretty easily trace program flow on paper using C, but
C++ is more difficult.

	I think that there is great room for C++ to be wonderful,
but a Smalltalk type environment seems to be the real need before
it's advantages can really be made to shine. Otherwise the header
files and dependencies can get unwieldy with larger projects.

-Jim Becker

yates@mtcs.UUCP (John Yates) (11/17/88)

> ...  The experience that I have with
> seeing programmers use C++ is that there is more rope than in other
> languages for their own hanging. It's easier for programmers to write 
> difficult to understand logic flow control in C++ than in C; one
> can always pretty easily trace program flow on paper using C, but
> C++ is more difficult.
> ... 
>
> -Jim Becker

I suspect that your problems with C++ programming may come largely from
poor class design.  From what I can tell (after using C++ for about
a year) it is often hard to define a good set of classes.  It is a
thing that a less experienced programmer will have touble with.  This
is also true in C, but the consequences are not as severe, at least
immediately.  If you design the internal interfaces poorly in C, you
can usually ignore them to get around the problems caused by the
interfaces being badly designed.  In C++, it is much harder to do this,
because the language is specifically designed to prevent it.

I think that if a program has well designed classes, then relatively
inexperienced programmers can implement them.  Furthermore, the
program as a whole will be better protected from the mistakes of a
poor implementation of a class than a C program will be from a poor
implementation of a program module written in C.

To sum up, I think that C++ is better than C for implementing well designed
programs, but C is much better for implementing badly designed programs.

John Yates
uunet!mtcs!yates