Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
Christopher Smith wrote:
Well, certainly more than Java. ;-) Certainly fewer than C/C++, but
probably as many as C++, if not more. ;-)
I can't actually find any numbers to defend or refute that C++
comparison. Do you have any?
C++ wasn't standardized until '98. Most compilers did not have
sufficient template support to even have a standard implementation of
the STL (let alone things like Loki or boost::lambda) until later. In
'95 people still hadn't figured out how to do exceptions safely, RTTI
wasn't well supported, iostreams were fundamentally different from what
was finally standardized on, etc. The formal proposal for the STL wasn't
submitted until '94 and was only approved in mid '94. As a general rule
people were timid about using much more than virtual functions,
constructors, destructors (and really only half heartedly on the
destructors) and if they were really feeling brave, operator
overloading. Open source C++ projects in the early 90's were very
careful to use a restricted subset of the language. Therefore I submit
almost noone was doing what I'd call "C++" development in '95 (hence the
smiley and the distinction between C/C++ and C++).
My gut feel is that C++ is *far* more popular than Smalltalk by 1995.
However, that is only based upon proxy measures like published books
and articles. That's not terribly satisfying evidence to me.
Well, it depends on what you mean by popular. If the sentence you're
looking for is, "We
are doing an X project." you're probably right. If the sentence is,
"We're doing an X project and liking it." you probably aren't. If the
sentence is, "We are doing an X project and we aren't afraid to use all
the language's features", you are dead wrong.
--Chris
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
