On Wednesday, April 22, 2020 8:32 PM, Michael Jones <gen...@jonesmz.com> wrote:
> > No-no. C++ is a nightmare. A few people want to use it. > > C++ is an extremely widespread language with millions of lines of code > written daily world wide. i think that might be misleading as it seems to imply that being a c++ dev is mutually exclusive against being a c dev (is it? the languages agree on many syntaxes/features). i think the right way of thinking is as follows: 1. identify programming features needed to code a reliable pms. i think most likely all we need is [recursive] function calls and if/else/loops. the rest probably has to do with algorithms (independent of the language). 2. pick language that has features (1) and has the largest users base. if the set of features in (1) is small enough (such as ones i suggested), then the c++ developers should be counted as c developers (because that part is common between c++ and c). 3. apply occam's razor. if two languages are equally satisfying points (1) and (2), then choose the simplest one. but if my thought is correct (that we only need the subset of features in c++ that's already in c), then c is guaranteed to have a greater effective number of developers in step (2). hence, we will not even need to apply occam's razor to remove c++ (unless points (1) and (2) result in a tie, which i don't think it does in this case). > Lots of people want to use it. Just not people who want to write a PMS > compliant package manager. probably same kind of people that are headed to blow their legs (and ours) in the process.
