Paul Boddie wrote:
> On 21 Feb, 19:22, Nicola Musatti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> On Feb 21, 6:31 pm, Paul Boddie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>>> The main reason why C++ has declined in usage is because almost
>>> everything of practical value is optional.
>> The main reason why C++ has declined in usage is because it never got
>> the kind of corporate marketing enjoyed by Java and C#.
No, the real problem is that C++ is the only major language to
have hiding ("abstraction") without memory safety. C has neither hiding
nor safety. Python, Java, Modula 3, Delphi, Ruby, C#, and Ada have hiding
with safety. Javascript, Perl, and LISP have safety without hiding. C++
stands alone as having hiding without safety, the least safe possibility.
The safety problems with C++ could be fixed, but the C++ committee
is off in template la-la land, ignoring safety issues in favor of
cute template features no one will use in production code.
This has nothing to do with language efficiency or whether the
language is interpreted. Of the languages listed with both hiding
and safety, Ada and Modula 3 are always compiled to hard machine code,
and Java can be. (GCC offers that option.)
John Nagle
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