[Numpy-discussion] Proposed Roadmap Overview

[Dag Sverre Seljebotn]

On 02/28/2012 11:05 AM, John Hunter wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 18, 2012 at 5:09 PM, David Cournapeau <cournape at gmail.com
> <mailto:cournape at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     There are better languages than C++ that has most of the technical
>     benefits stated in this discussion (rust and D being the most
>     "obvious" ones), but whose usage is unrealistic today for various
>     reasons: knowledge, availability on "esoteric" platforms, etc… A new
>     language is completely ridiculous.
>
>
>
> I just saw this for the first time today: Linus Torvalds on C++
> (http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus).  The post is from 2007 so
> many of you may have seen it, but I thought it was entertainng enough
> and on-topic enough with this thread that I'd share it in case you haven't.
>
>
> The point he makes:
>
>    In other words, the only way to do good, efficient, and system-level and
>    portable C++ ends up to limit yourself to all the things that
> are basically
>    available in C
>
> was interesting to me because the best C++ library I have ever worked
> with (agg) imports *nothing* except standard C libs (no standard
> template library).  In fact, the only includes external to external to
> itself are math.h, stdlib.h, stdio.h, and string.h.
>
> To shoehorn Jamie Zawinski's famous regex quote
> (http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247). "Some people, when confronted
> with a problem, think “I know, I'll use boost.”   Now they have two
> problems."


In the same vein, this one neatly sums up all the bad sides of C++.

(I don't really want to enter the language discussion. But this list is 
a nice list of the cons, and perhaps that can save discussion time 
because people don't have to enumerate those reasons again on this list?)

http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/defective.html

Dag


>
> Here is the Linus post:
>
> From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds <at> linux-foundation.org
> <http://linux-foundation.org>>
> Subject: Re: [RFC] Convert builin-mailinfo.c to use The Better String
> Library.
> Newsgroups: gmane.comp.version-control.git
> Date: 2007-09-06 17:50:28 GMT (2 years, 14 weeks, 16 hours and 36
> minutes ago)
>
> On Wed, 5 Sep 2007, Dmitry Kakurin wrote:
>  >
>  > When I first looked at Git source code two things struck me as odd:
>  > 1. Pure C as opposed to C++. No idea why. Please don't talk about
> portability,
>  > it's BS.
>
> *YOU* are full of bullshit.
>
> C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot
> of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much
> easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if
> the choice of C were to do *nothing* but keep the C++ programmers out,
> that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.
>
> In other words: the choice of C is the only sane choice. I know Miles
> Bader jokingly said "to piss you off", but it's actually true. I've come
> to the conclusion that any programmer that would prefer the project to be
> in C++ over C is likely a programmer that I really *would* prefer to piss
> off, so that he doesn't come and screw up any project I'm involved with.
>
> C++ leads to really really bad design choices. You invariably start using
> the "nice" library features of the language like STL and Boost and other
> total and utter crap, that may "help" you program, but causes:
>
>   - infinite amounts of pain when they don't work (and anybody who tells me
>     that STL and especially Boost are stable and portable is just so full
>     of BS that it's not even funny)
>
>   - inefficient abstracted programming models where two years down the road
>     you notice that some abstraction wasn't very efficient, but now all
>     your code depends on all the nice object models around it, and you
>     cannot fix it without rewriting your app.
>
> In other words, the only way to do good, efficient, and system-level and
> portable C++ ends up to limit yourself to all the things that are
> basically available in C. And limiting your project to C means that people
> don't screw that up, and also means that you get a lot of programmers that
> do actually understand low-level issues and don't screw things up with any
> idiotic "object model" crap.
>
> So I'm sorry, but for something like git, where efficiency was a primary
> objective, the "advantages" of C++ is just a huge mistake. The fact that
> we also piss off people who cannot see that is just a big additional
> advantage.
>
> If you want a VCS that is written in C++, go play with Monotone. Really.
> They use a "real database". They use "nice object-oriented libraries".
> They use "nice C++ abstractions". And quite frankly, as a result of all
> these design decisions that sound so appealing to some CS people, the end
> result is a horrible and unmaintainable mess.
>
> But I'm sure you'd like it more than git.
>
>              Linus
>
>
>
>
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