GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns [LWN.net]

GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

Posted Dec 24, 2012 16:38 UTC (Mon) by heijo (guest, #88363)
In reply to: GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns by landley
Parent article: GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

The whole point of C++ is to provide the maximum amount of abstraction possible while still allowing to have almost full control of the generated assembly code, memory layout, runtime behavior and performance of your program.

And I think it's absolutely excellent at that, to the point that it is the only language widely used in that niche, while other niches have lots of competing languages.

If you want maximum abstraction and programmer comfort at the cost of not being able to generate arbitrary assembly/memory layout or obtain arbitrary runtime behavior and performance tradeoffs, then C++ is just not the right language to use, and I'd recommend Scala or C# instead.

Note however that in some areas like algorithms, data structures and numerics C++ has FAR better support and abstractions than most (probably all) languages, since for instance in Java and C# you can't do arithmetic with variables with a generic type, and C++ probably has more powerful algorithmic libraries than any other language (STL, Boost, GMP++, LEDA, CGAL, LEMON, etc.).

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GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

Posted Dec 25, 2012 21:53 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> The whole point of C++ is to provide the maximum amount of abstraction possible while still allowing to have almost full control of the generated assembly code, memory layout, runtime behavior and performance of your program.

If that's not the definition of "kitchen-sink" then I don't know what is. Strong agreement with the previous poster.

> Note however that in some areas like algorithms, data structures and numerics C++ has FAR better support and abstractions than most (probably all) languages, since for instance in Java and C# you can't do arithmetic with variables with a generic type, and C++ probably has more powerful algorithmic libraries than any other language (STL, Boost, GMP++, LEDA, CGAL, LEMON, etc.).

By the way: C++ was born under "C with classes" name. Now here is an excerpt from an fantastic interview with the man behind the C++ STL:

"Yes. STL is not object oriented. I think that object orientedness is almost as much of a hoax as Artificial Intelligence. I have yet to see an interesting piece of code that comes from these OO people. In a sense, I am unfair to AI [...] I find OOP technically unsound...."

GNU sed 4.2.2 released; maintainer resigns

Posted Dec 26, 2012 3:23 UTC (Wed) by artem (subscriber, #51262) [Link]

In my experience, every time I use a library with OO API I have to resort to downcasting or run-time type checking whenever I need to do something non-trivial - often it's the documented and officially recommended way. That's what the man probably meant by 'technically unsound' - looks like his standards of soundness are way above average industry level.