Le 2012-02-22 à 02:12:00, katja a écrit :
I was considering C++ just for programming comfort. I know that
everything can be done in C but it is so clumsy for making class-like
things. If Pd would be conceived today, would it be written in C?
I can't imagine Miller writing it in C++...
But even though I'd like Pd to be written in C++, I'm conscious of its
limitations about dynamic OOP. For example, you can't define methods at
runtime, find methods by string, etc., which is bad for making a language
like Pd.
So, the comfort of C++ programming and the time saved during development
may be outweighed by troubles in deployment? I have to think twice... My
lib should easily build and run wherever Pd runs.
I'm not saying that, but it is annoying.
It's also possible to use a lot of C++ features while still using plain
CDECL interfaces for external linkage (extern "C"). Plain Pd externals are
even simpler : they only need to export one function to the linkers, and
they do the rest of the linking by calling class_addmethod and such.
I started reading Axel-Tobias Schreiner's 'Object-Oriented Programming
with ANSI-C', found via Marvin's link. The title made me enthusiastic
for a moment. I like C. But for OOP? It's a lot of dull administration.
OOP has been done many times in C. There are many examples of it, most
notably Xt (the common portion between Athena, XView/OpenLook, Motif/CDE,
the old widget toolkits) ; but even more notably, Glib/Gtk/GNOME.
It's good to read a book like that if you wanted to rewrite Pd in C++ (I
don't know that book, I mean only this topic). This is because even if you
use C++, you'll probably have to cook your own OOP features at one point
or another. Even though C++ includes tonnes of features and very intricate
details, it still leaves a lot of interesting topics untouched. C++ is
really meant for compile-only use, and anything that looks like an
interpreted language (such as Pd) is unimplemented.
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| Mathieu BOUCHARD ----- téléphone : +1.514.383.3801 ----- Montréal, QC
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