jeff@stormy.atmos.washington.edu (Jeff L. Bowden) (01/06/89)
I just read an article in the latest Dr Dobbs (Journal For Myopic PC-DOS Programmers) comparing C++ to Modula 2. While nothing incredibly controversial/misleading was said, there was correspondingly little of value in the article. If I knew nothing of either language (emphatically *not* the case), I doubt that I could have come close to making any accurate determination about which language to pursue. (The code provided makes Modula 2 look pretty ugly though so maybe I would have made the Right Choice for the wrong reason 1/2:-) One big error that the author did make, though, was the statement that Stroustrup took Smalltalk as his object-oriented inspiration. A quick read of the "Notes to Readers" in the C++ book, though, would have been enough to tell him that it was Simula67 which was the second big influence (after C, of course). The error is then compounded when the author starts trying to fit C++ constructs in to Smalltalk terminology (i.e. "methods", "messages"). Just another example to make me glad I dropped my subscription.