Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.object
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From: jimad@microsoft.com (Jim Adcock)
Subject: Re: C++ Productivity
Message-ID: <D3DxGM.GIr@microsoft.com>
Organization: Microsoft Corporation
Keywords: C++ Productivity Smalltalk
Date: Thu, 2 Feb 1995 18:17:07 GMT
References: <1995Jan25.201226.28856@rcmcon.com> <1995Jan26.150433@lglsun.epfl.ch> <1995Jan27.165208.5951@rcmcon.com>
Lines: 50
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.c++:110691 comp.lang.smalltalk:20279 comp.object:26042

In article <1995Jan27.165208.5951@rcmcon.com> rmartin@rcmcon.com (Robert Martin) writes:
|nebbe@lglsun.epfl.ch (Robb Nebbe) writes:
|
|>In article <1995Jan25.201226.28856@rcmcon.com>, rmartin@rcmcon.com (Robert Martin) writes:
|>...
|>|> 
|>|> This is an extremely warped view of the history of C++.  One might
|>|> think you had an axe to grind.  In the 15 years that C++ has been
|>|> evolving, it has steadily grown in popularity.  Presumably this was because
|>|> people liked it, and found it useful.  
|
|>I would say it has grown in popularity because of the benefits it offers
|>over C. Few organizations have the level of maturity much less the
|>resources to perform an evaluation of different languages. Given the
|>choice between C and C++ I would find it hard not to choose C++. If my
|>choice is between C, Pascal, C++, Eiffel, Ada, SmallTalk ... then C++
|>isn't very likely to come out on top.
|
|That is *your* choice.  But the industry has apparently chosen
|differently -- for now.  I don't accept your assertion that most
|organizations are unable to look at different languages.  Most
|organizations have engineers who are constantly looking at new
|languages and new tools, because they are interested, not because it
|is there job.  These engineers eventually make recommendations to
|other engineers, and to their managers.  

Read from example HOPL I and II ["History of Programming Languages", ACM]

A new programming language that "makes the grade" in the marketplace is 
an exceedingly rare event.  At a previous employer back in the early
1980's the engineers there were very interested in OOPL, encapsulation,
etc.  Programmers there wrote a number of local dialects of common languages
adding encapsulation, OOP, etc, where are those efforts today?  Then
for a year or two we used Mainsail, then Objective-C, etc.  Some of
these languages produced code that was too big or too slow for production
code, many lacked serious vendor support, either for the language, and/or
for the libraries that went with the language, or for a system we needed
to run on etc.  It was NO FUN to be writing code on a language that wasn't
making the grade.  Most of us have enough complaints about our compiler
vendors, without having a compiler vendor where you are their sole customer
and you pay to keep your vendor alive, and meanwhile their programmers, 
marketing staff, etc are bailing out of the company.  It is usually plenty 
hard to get a product to market without these complications.

Having said that, would I like a better programming language than C++?
You bet.  But would I be willing to go through the last 8-9 years of C++
vendor support "growing pains" with a new language in order to get
to the stage where the language is supported by a number of vendors,
libraries, systems, etc, in a semi-reliable manner?  No way Jose!

