Nice Quote

[Bazzy]

Bjarne Stroustrup wrote:

The major cause of complaints is C++ undoubted success. As someone remarked: There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses.

http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/blast.html



Hope who should understand will understand
;^)

[firedraco]

_{I doubt it, but I suppose one can hope...}

[Nohbdy]

// Whoah, Bjarne Stroustrup is awesome. Those seem to be some good communication methods he has there, I could learn quite a bit from that. +50 Respect

[D80DSL3A]

Nice mis-quote found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B
I thought this was funny:

A fraudulent article was written wherein Bjarne Stroustrup is supposedly interviewed for a 1998 issue of IEEE's 'Computer' magazine. In this article, the interviewer expects to discuss the successes of C++ now that several years had passed after its introduction. Instead, the impostor posing as Stroustrup proceeds to "confess" that his invention of C++ was intended to create the most complex and difficult language possible to weed out amateur programmers and raise the salaries of the few programmers who could master the language. The article contains various criticisms of C++'s complexity and poor usability, most false or exaggerated. In reality, Stroustrup wrote no such article, and due to the pervasiveness of the hoax, was compelled to publish an official denial on his website.

[helios]

Is this a BS quotes thread, or a general quotes thread? Because this is one of my favorite quotes of all times:

I don't have figures, but my guess is that the fraction of the 60 million existing PCs that are 386/486 machines as opposed to 8088/286/680x0 etc is small. Among students it is even smaller. Making software free, but only for folks with enough money to buy first class hardware is an interesting concept.
Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5.

-Andrew S. Tanenbaum, at 19920130T134434Z.
The guy was then and still is an eminence in computer architecture and OS design. This is merely to illustrate how unpredictable this industry is, not how fractally wrong* he was.



_{* Still, though. I mean, damn!}

[filipe]

That's the guy who wrote MINIX, right? The post exchange between him and Linus Torvalds is really entertaining literature.

Since we're talking quotes, I really like this one:

In summary: the microprocessor will provide at low material cost a delightful outlet for the uneducated computnik with nothing better to do, but the possibility of massproduction of those infernal gadgets carries with it the danger of draining our intellectual powers to an extent that no society can afford. In short:

"microprocessors are not great!"

- Edsger W. Dijkstra
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD634.html

Although Dijkstra was almost always wrong about the future of programming, I can't help but really like the guy.

[EzwRko23]

Bjarne Stroustoup wrote:

The major cause of complaints is C++ undoubted success. As someone remarked: There are only two kinds of programming languages: those people always bitch about and those nobody uses

Actually he was wrong with this too. There are some languages that are MORE popular than C++, but get much less criticism. Pure C or Java are good examples.

Why is C++ different? Ken Thompson, the creator of Unix, answers it for me quite well:

Ken Thompson wrote:

It certainly has its good points. But by and large I think it’s a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and it’s just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually exclusive. Everybody I know, whether it’s personal or corporate, selects a subset and these subsets are different. So it’s not a good language to transport an algorithm—to say, “I wrote it; here, take it.” It’s way too big, way too complex. And it’s obviously built by a committee.

Stroustrup campaigned for years and years and years, way beyond any sort of technical contributions he made to the language, to get it adopted and used. And he sort of ran all the standards committees with a whip and a chair. And he said “no” to no one. He put every feature in that language that ever existed. It wasn’t cleanly designed—it was just the union of everything that came along. And I think it suffered drastically from that.

[chrisname]

I think saying Ken Thompson is "the" creator of UNIX is unfair. You're forgetting Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy and Joe Ossana.

[S6k9GNh0]

Uh, he's not "wrong". The point is that everyone complains and criticizes a language that is popular because its a decent language or they wouldn't bother at all. They do the same for Pure C and Java is HEAVILY criticized.

And xorebxebx, why the fuck are you even here if all you do is bash C++? Your complaints for the most part are hardly even valid and you're hardly productive. You might even be driving people away from C++ under such bullcrap circumstances.

[Bazzy]

Please don't post if you don't have a quote

I wrote:

Please don't post if you don't have a quote

;^)


[edit]By the way, There's a whole wikipedia article on criticism of Java: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Java
While criticism of C++ has only a subsection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B#Criticism

[firedraco]

You might even be driving people away from C++ under such bullcrap circumstances.

You act like that isn't his point...

[Albatross]

I don't think there's any point kicking a dead horse, don't you? After all, xorebxebx has been banned, and xoredxedx has not yet registered. :)

-Albatross

[Null]

After all, xorebxebx has been banned, and xoredxedx has not yet registered. :)

Don't forget xorecxecx: http://www.cplusplus.com/member/xorecxecx

[Albatross]

xorecxecx isn't xoreaxeax... I was under the impression that 'ecx' just wanted to poke fun.

-Albatross

[rocketboy9000]

C++ is in my opinion a useful compromise between the speed of C and the features of Ruby. Java is like a slow, ugly, crippled C++ in my opinion. About it and the kids who are taught it at my high school, I would quote the following from Edsger Dijkstra's "How do we tell truths that might hurt?":

# It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.
# The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offence.
# APL is a mistake, carried through to perfection. It is the language of the future for the programming techniques of the past: it creates a new generation of coding bums.

EDIT: I mean, is it so hard for there to be functions outside of any class? My goodness, that makes hello world 5 lines at least, when any other interpreted language will accept something like:
print "Hello, World!"

[sohguanh]

C++ is in my opinion a useful compromise between the speed of C and the features of Ruby. Java is like a slow, ugly, crippled C++ in my opinion.

Actually I feel every programming language has it's pros and cons. I believe the number of business-centri API in the Java SDK out-strip that of standard C++ API.

If you are developing software for business organizations, common features like email, database interfacing, M$ Excel, Word interfacing, logging, XML parsing etc are almost mandatory and the core Java SDK has all of that. In comparison, standard C++ does not and we have to "dig" around ourselves to get the relevant Open Source project for that feature. This can be time consuming from my opinion.

However, when it come to highly critical task and performance is of utmost importance, C++ still reign in my opinion. This is also why I maintain both Java and C++ as part of my skill sets.

PS Now in the midst of learning more on CSS and Javascript :)

[Seraphimsan]

SomeGuy wrote:

"Real programmers don't learn languages they learn the process of learning languages"

[Duthomhas]

rocketboy9000 wrote:

My goodness, that makes hello world 5 lines at least, when any other interpreted language will accept something like:
print "Hello, World!"

C++ isn't an interpreted language. Take a look at the code required to make it so that the user can type that single line and you'll better appreciate the convenience of interpreted languages, and the power of compiled languages like C++.

[rocketboy9000]

I was actually referring to Java. C++/C allows one to have functions outside classes, but not actions outside functions making helloworld:

#include "stdio.h"
int main(void){
    puts("Hello, World");
}

Whereas java requires another layer, a class:

class myfirstjavaprog {  
        public static void main(String args[]){
           System.out.println("Hello World!");
        }
}

And, furthermore, "public static void"? "System.out.println"??? Why are these things so long for the most basic actions in all programming? An interpreted language has no excuse for this kind of stuff.
EDIT: For ruby, perl, python, and basic it's print "Hello, World". For shells it's echo "Hello World".

[Duthomhas]

Heh, I hate Java too... I think it is cobbled from some horrible design decisions. That said, I am familiar with it and don't find it that difficult to use.

An interpreted language has no excuse for this kind of stuff.

Agreed. Unfortunately, Java is a compiled language.