Learning C++ (was Re: [PyKDE] Line numbers in TextEdit box?)

[Steve Simmons]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2003 at 10:12:33AM -0500, Frederick Polgardy Jr wrote:

> I definitely have to second this.  (Would that be: this->second()?  I 
> guess for a std::pair it would be just this->second.  Ugh, feel free to 
> just shoot me at any time. :))

No problem.  :-)

I've watched C++ grow since it was 'C with classes' in the very early
1980s.  Every time a more advanced OO feature was shoehorned into it,
the resulting language became more of a mess.  It's what finally drove
me to look at smalltalk and now python.

Objective C is a much better language if you really need the speed of
fully compiled objects.

But no matter whether we talk about python, objC, eiffel or C++, no matter
of linguistic purity is going to outweigh the shee mass of C/C++ code out
there.  Combine that with the OO mess that is C++ and the seeming ease of
the C => C++  learning curve, and you get a mass of awful code that just
isn't going to go away.  Nevertheless, it means we shouldn't muck with it
unless we have to -- and God willing, we won't have to.