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From: bs@research.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup)
Subject: Re: What is wrong with OO ?
Message-ID: <E413nz.9IA@research.att.com>
Organization: AT&T Research, Murray Hill, NJ, USA
References: <32D11FD3.41C6@wi.leidenuniv.nl> <E3pzy4.DHE@research.att.com> <dewar.853017041@merv>
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 1997 02:45:35 GMT
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dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

 > Bjarne, in the middle of a very nice extended discussion of C++, says
 > 
 > "Had C++ not been relatively easy to learn and use reasonably well, it
 > would have disappeared long ago. By relative I mean the amount of effort
 > needed compared to the amount of benefit gained."
 > 
 > Hmmm! I don't think I buy that. People will learn what is at hand pretty
 > much regardless of whether something is easy to learn and use.
 > ...
 > Going back to the main subject, which is the allegation that popularity
 > indicates ease of learning and use,

I don't think I claimed that, and I don't think that I have to. C++ use grew
very nicely for years without hype. I base my statement on years of looking
at C++ use, teching, and learning - many of those years were before anyone
was given time off from their day job to learn C++.

I think that if C++ was as hard to understand and use as some people claim,
it would have failed to become popular in the first place and would have
vanished under the continuous barrage of fair and unfair criticism - despite
its (eventual) popularity.

 >  I think the point is that such
 > popularity indicates accesibility more than anything else. By accessibility
 > I mean that something is available, viewed as hot, and can be learned well
 > enough to do *something*. Consider the situation today, students want to
 > learn Java, not C++, they see C++ as yesterday's language, and Java as
 > the language of tomorrow. Just from the incredible rate at which Java books
 > are cascading into bookstores, I have to guess that the rate of learning of
 > Java far exceeds the rate of learning of C++. But I would NOT conclude from
 > this that Java is easier to learn or use than C++. Maybe it is, but you
 > cannot conclude anything just from popularity.

It is amazing what hype and serious marketing dollars can do, but what
little objective data I can lay my hands on indicates that C++ use is
still increasing very nicely. However, I have my doubts whether all of
those books will actually help the Java community. 

I have often found myself wondering if the C++ wouldn't have been much better
for all concered had there (just) been two dozen good C++ books instead of
the 400+ books that mostly fail to teach the basic principles and mostly
lead students and programmers astray. The snag, of course, is that we have
no mechanism of separating the good from the bad. I doubt such a mechanism
could exist - at least while things change as fast as they do in our industry
and we have little agreement on what is good and bad.

 > Ada folks have never played the game of claiming popularity as an indicator
 > of any kind of quality, because they have not been able to. I realize that
 > C++ is in a position to make such claims, but I recommend against it, because
 > I think you will find that your arguments will backfire as Java becomes
 > the next hot language, at least for a while :-)

Thanks for the advice. The furthest I go is to claim that unless C++
had at least some of the virtues I claim for it, it would have died during
the early years where there were essentially no C++ marketing and alternatives
languages with marketing dollars behind them existed.

Naturally, even that is invariably mistaken for the disreputable "5 million
morons cannot be wrong" argument :-(

	- Bjarne

Bjarne Stroustrup, AT&T Research, http://www.research.att.com/~bs/homepage.html
