Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee [LWN.net]

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 22, 2010 14:43 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee by cmccabe
Parent article: Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

To be fair, non-virtual methods are, we now know, extremely dangerous and inconsistent with the type-safety of inheritance (some of which was developed with and even after the development of C++). That C++ even allows them is perhaps a historical curiosity. One of a number of misfeatures in C++, where new language features were added before they were fully understood, leaving vestigial dangers waiting to trip up programmers. I like the other commentator's description of C++ being "the awkward, error-prone adolescence of higher-level languages".

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Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 25, 2010 4:46 UTC (Sat) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link] (1 responses)

> To be fair, non-virtual methods are, we now know, extremely dangerous [...]. That C++ even allows them is perhaps a historical curiosity.

Absolutely not a historical curiosity! I can't imagine using a C++-like language that didn't allow non-virtual members. Being able to do OOP with *zero* runtime overhead is a killer feature!

There's certainly place in the world for languages like Python too (which I do like, despite its horrific slowness), but C++ without non-virtual methods would just be sad.

Apache resigns from the Java Community Process executive committee

Posted Dec 25, 2010 10:50 UTC (Sat) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

It's a killer feature in terms of weird bugs, yes. If non-virtual methods were also not overridable, then perhaps it'd be a useful thing...