-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Chuck Esterbrook wrote: > On Nov 12, 2007 11:07 AM, Christopher Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> Well, but they *did* write a browser in Objective-C: >>> http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/ >> I love almost everything the Omni guys do. That said, last I used that >> thing it had trouble with all kinds of websites. Has it come along since >> then? > > Based on reviews, it has. But I haven't used it myself as I tend to > oscillate between Safari and Firefox.
Okay then. Perhaps it is possible that C++ provides no redeeming value over Objective-C. Interestingly, until 2.0, Objective-C *also* didn't have automatic memory management (and certainly OmniWeb doesn't have it or they rolled their own on top of Objective-C, as C++ developers sometimes do). So ironically, we're still left with a perplexing lack of consistency between reality and the original assertion that started this thread. > Then we can at least agree that C++ is like Windows. :-) Well, I like C++ more than I like Windows, but yeah, they both have the aesthetic beauty of... well I'm not sure what the right words are. > It's also popular to trash it because it sucks. :-) > See: http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html Yes, I'm very familiar with the site. It is not entirely correct, but certainly it is fair to say that C++ has a lot of syntactic baroqueness, and this is the result of a deliberate trade off by the designer(s) of the language. I could write a similar paper (okay, probably a lot less on the baroque syntax) on any language that I'd used extensively. Use a language long enough and you start to understand all those horrid warts. A language designer will tell you that languages are about trade offs, so you can't come up with a prefect language. They will always have things they don't do well. Occasionally, someone comes up with a set of trade offs that seem practical for a useful subset of problems. I've yet to be convinced that any of those languages is really that much better than all others for anything but a subset of problems, and I frequently am left asking the question, "if language A really is so crappy, why hasn't every widely used application developed in it been replaced by some version written in a different language?" > By the way, I once became so fed up with crashes in KMail (back when I > used Linux as my desktop) that I filed a bug report contending that > something as important as a mail client should be done in a "protected > programming language", such as Python or Java, so that (a) crashes > were accompanied by a timely, accurate stack trace and (b) corruption > of data was less likely. I've tried using some of the Java mail clients people have come up with. They always seems to be inferior to their C and C++ counterparts (heck, often inferior to their *elisp* counterparts!). A few times I've thought about writing my own just to see if I could make one that really was better. I've thought of writing one that was largely in a scripting language with some C++ components, but upon reflection it isn't clear that its significantly easier to make a high quality mail client in Java or any other language I've played with than doing so in C++. The primary challenges have little to do with the language and while C++ presents problems that the others do not, vice versa is also true. - --Chris -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHOUZ8OagjPOywMBARAhDvAJ9aSd2XokFNiOCnTFBWCQpIJQDtCgCeL7uN rK9l5Ct6uByKyZ7fyDWGl34= =MPOy -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
