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C++


I don't like C++


Yes, I don't.
To me, C++ is just a wrapper/middleware to C in function-wise.
C can do everything C++ tries to do.
"Linus Torvalds' comment on C++" can provide more on it:


? (0xe2.0x9a.0x9b@gmail.com) on 6/6/10 wrote:
---------------------------
>Linus Torvalds (torvalds@linux-foundation.org) on 6/5/10 wrote:
>---------------------------
>>[cut]
>>And I really do dislike C++. It's a really bad language, in
>>my opinion. It tries to solve all the wrong problems, and
>>does not tackle the right ones. The things C++ "solves"
>>are trivial things, almost purely syntactic extensions to
>>C rather than fixing some true deep problem.
>
>Care to write an explicit example of a deep problem?
>(Except memory management - you already mentioned garbage
>collection.)

Concurrency, for example.

My point being, that C++ adds absolutely nothing
interesting.

>All right. Then why do you think C should have support
>for structures (struct {...})?

That's just singularly stupid.

C is a good language. It's complete enough (and yes, the
ability to handle structured data is very much required
for any serious language) to be supremely useful, while
at the same time being quite simple.

A language without structured data types would not be a
powerful language the way C is. You do need data structures,
and you need pointers (to both data and code) to be at
all interesting.

But where do you draw the line?

I know that you as a C++ proponent you probably won't
really "get" this simple argument, but try:

- read the K&R book on C (the ANSI edition), and be
enlightened.

Notice how the language is basically described by one
rather thin book. Readably.

So what C does so well is to do that whole "make it as
simple as you can, but no simpler". And that is what makes
it great. The language is powerful, yet fairly minimal.

There really aren't many features you could remove
from the C language without crippling it. Sure, there's
three different looping constructs, and you could make
trivial (syntactic) changes to the language, but that's
really not the point. The language is simple, but
without being too simple.

Now, that's not what you always want. I understand very
well why people want less system-oriented languages with
more built-in functionality. As mentioned, support for
both garbage collection and concurrency are quite real
problems, and they are both things you can do in C, but
that you cannot do well with library interfaces,
which is how you normally would extend on C.

And garbage collection and concurrency are way more than
just syntactic extensions. You can still do them very
badly, of course, so it's not a trivial path to go down,
and I'm not saying hat a language magically becomes "good"
just from supporting one or the other.

But again: C does what it does very well, and with a
clarity of thought and design that is entirely and
utterly lacking from C++.

And yes, I happen to think that clarity of thought and
design is a good thing. It's why I liked UNIX, even though
I was initially introduced to other things (VMS - ugh).

C++ is a mess. There's no design. It's just "add crud on
top of C". And the crud isn't even meaningful, much less
does it have a design. It's totally and utterly random.

It started out random, now it's randomness that gets added
to by a committee.

>For example, namespaces and function overloading are *not*
>useless. They *do* solve a real problem that C is incapable
>of solving.

You're full of it.

>For example, if you want in your source code to define a
>function called "connect" and you also want include
>"sys/socket.h", you cannot do that in C.

So to prove how it's not just a syntactic feature, you
start talking about syntax?

What drugs are you on?

The name overloading is a total syntactic feature. In
C, the way you fix your problem is by a totally trivial
syntactic change: you call your function "my_connect()".

Wow. It's like magic. I added three characters, and made
your whole reason for the crap that is C++ go away.

The thing is, the above is a really good example of why
C++ is horrible, and why C is so simple.

Yes, the C solution is really simple. It's so simple that
it looks downright stupid. But it's actually so simple
that it is smart because quite frankly, it's a lot
easier to get confused in C++ code, when the same function
name means totally different due to overloading.

Of course, you're not "supposed" to overload things in
confusing ways, but the thing is, just do what C does:
just make your function names unique. It's not that hard,
and by avoiding the overloading mess, you make it a lot
easier to search for (hey look! "grep -w my_connect" just
works!), and you avoid ambiguity.

(Same exact thing goes for your other example: just
add a module prefix or have some other trivial naming
rules for your functional split-up, and be happy)

Linus
By: Linus Torvalds (torvalds.delete@this.linux-foundation.org), June 6, 2010 8:35 pm

Practices

LeetCode: Blind Curated 75

To Learn C++

  1. Google C++ Style Guide
  2. Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours
  3. Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using C++
  4. Accelerated C++: Practical Programming by Example
  5. C++ Primer, Fifth Edition
  6. C++ How to Program
    7. by Paul Deitel and Dr. Harvey Deitel.
  7. Essential C++
    8. by Stanley B. Lippman
  8. Effective C++: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs
    9. by Scott Meyers
  9. Insied the C++ Object Model
    10. by Stanley B. Lippman
  10. C++ Standard Library, The: A Tutorial and Reference
    11. by Nicolai Josuttis
  11. C++ Templates: The Complete Guide
Suggestions on reading material include: Googler's Blogs sharing on their Interview Preparation Journey
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