Doug Ransom wrote:
> I think you are mistakening ignorance for stupidity. It
> is true that C/C++ programmers like to write OO and few
> have any idea about functional programming, but very few
> will miss the ability to constantly shoot themselves in
> the foot with uninitalized random pointers, weird memory
> access errors, and none will miss spending a couple of
> weeks at the end of the development cycle trying to find
> a memory leak.
With such optimism about programmers, I'm astounded that you're writing from
a .com rather than a .edu address. :-) My experience in industry has led me
to quite different conclusions. Many C/C++ programmers seem not to recognize
pointer issues as a problem, or at least, one with a viable solution; when
offered languages with built-in GC, they say things like, "I like doing my
own memory management; it gives me more control and makes it clearer what's
really going on in the program." As I pointed out in a previous message,
most of these people can't really handle the power that this "more control"
gives them, but they have a blind spot that prevents them from recognizing
that this is a problem.
Craig
