On 07/25/2010 04:54 PM, bearophile wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu:
In my humble opinion, the design of Java, C#, and Go is proof that
their authors didn't get the STL. Otherwise, those languages would
be very different.
I don't believe you. Among the designers of Java, C# and Go there are
people that are both experts and smart. C# designers have shown to be
sometimes smarter than D designers. So I think some of them 'get the
STL' and understand its advantages, but despite this in the universe
they have found some other reasons to refuse it. I think they were
unwilling to pay the large price in language complexity,
bug-prone-ness, code bloat and compilation speed that C++ and D are
willing to pay.
But then their containers and algorithms are markedly inferior to STL's.
They are toxic to the programmers who have only been exposed to them. So
Java and C# got STL and decided to not go with it, I'm sure they would
have at least gotten a few good bits from it. But no - the entire e.g.
Java container library is parallel to everything STL stands for.
Here you can find why C# designers have refused C++-style templates&
STL and chosen the generics instead:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/it-it/magazine/cc163683%28en-us%29.aspx One
important problem of C# generics can be solved adding
IArithmetic<T>: http://www.osnews.com/story/7930
I like D templates and I agree that adding them to D1 was a good idea
(mostly because D1 is designed to be similar to C++) but you must
accept that some language designers can understand STL and still
refuse to add all the features necessary to implement it.
Maybe there is a way to build something like STL without C++/D-style
templates :-)
I'm sure there is, and Java and C# could have come a long way. But
taking their libraries at face value, they are simply ignorant of STL's
values - to their detriment.
Andrei
