What makes C and C++ a "good" language?
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pasztorpisti wrote:
Then we agree that C/C++ has obvious defects that shouldn't exist with todays technology.
I didn't say that.
Well, up until now we basically havent listed any useful stuff for the OP about C/C++ benefits/defects. We just continued a totally unneded flame war that started from my statement about C/C++ headers so now I'm going to give a random list of some useful stuff about defects without attempting to be comprehensive because that would be too long. Today it would be quite reasonable to use a "fixed/repaired" version of C without most of its defects - the same is true for C++. Of course no language is perfect but the number of C/C++ defects are unreasonable in a modern widely used general purpose language. There are several obvious bugs just alone in C that are directly inherited by C++. My favorite is: The Most Expensive One-byte Mistake[^] The simple C language alone allows for a lot of programming errors most of which could be eliminated just by making the language more strict. I link a list of C programming errors that can be committed easily and accidently: http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/topten.html[^] Previously I mentioned header files that started a dispute. Some people would argue that headers are good because they separate the interface for reading. I think this is rather a personal preference - with todays tools you can esily extract such information on the fly for languages with better design like C# and Java as well where full runtime type information is available in the ide basically all the time. Even if you prefer header files, there are other languages that implement it in a much better way, I would compare C/C++ headers to assembly text file includes (containing full fledged C source code). (My favorite and silently compiling include related bug was when I found an anonymous namespace in a header, imagine what happens in this case...). Declarations in headers are not guaranteed to match cpp content if a mistake is made not to mention hidden dependencies. I would even question the readability of C++ header files that contain not only public/protected stuff but private and implementation details too (inlined functions -most notably templates - and data members are of course separated from actual implementation of the class methods). Headers and macros held back the development of C/C
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Can someone tell me why C++ and C programming languages are used than any other programming languages, what can these languages do that others can't. I do know that C can create drivers or system files, which is very important when you become serious about your projects. But why is the industry still use it? And will C or C++ ever die, even though it's a non-stop updating language everyday, and what other languages update just like C/C++. EDIT: While also asking this question, will C++/CLI take over or kill out Standard/Win32 C++? Cause I'm on a website called Codejock Software, looking for a ribbon control to work for Standard/Win32 C++ only, and I can't find it. Most of the controls are only made for C++/CLI.
Simple Thanks and Regards, Brandon T. H. Programming in C and C++ now, now developing applications, services and drivers (and maybe some kernel modules...psst kernel-mode drivers...psst). Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas Edison
One programming language is not better than other. Use the right tool for the right job. PS: Note that ANYTHING is better than JAVA though. This is an exception.
"Real men drive manual transmission" - Rajesh.
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The less mistakes a language lets to make, the better the language is. Its not real knowledge to learn to deal with the idiotic features of a complex language. If you work in a big team its more likely that someone will be unable to "design". On the other hand the header include are nowhere for example compared to turbo pascal/delphi units. Every other normal language uses some kind of "units" that contain data preprocessed for the compile to make things faster and easier. On the other hand only people how don't have experience with massive codebases don't feel the significance of the slow compilation times caused by header includes.
pasztorpisti wrote:
don't feel the significance of the slow compilation times caused by header includes.
Granted I haven't programmed large scale C/C++ applications in 10 years, but I did do a lot of very large scale C and C++ applications before then, and it was common practice to use Precompiled Headers. There should be no need to be continually chopping and changing headers around, so I don't see why you would have such a massive problem. In fact, this was one of the nicer features of Visual C++ 6 - the ability not to recompile parts of code that hadn't changed.
*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington
"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier
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pasztorpisti wrote:
don't feel the significance of the slow compilation times caused by header includes.
Granted I haven't programmed large scale C/C++ applications in 10 years, but I did do a lot of very large scale C and C++ applications before then, and it was common practice to use Precompiled Headers. There should be no need to be continually chopping and changing headers around, so I don't see why you would have such a massive problem. In fact, this was one of the nicer features of Visual C++ 6 - the ability not to recompile parts of code that hadn't changed.
*pre-emptive celebratory nipple tassle jiggle* - Sean Ewington
"Mind bleach! Send me mind bleach!" - Nagy Vilmos
CodeStash - Online Snippet Management | My blog | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier
Agree, precompiled headers is a nice 'hack' of modern ages, but you can not put everything into precompiled headers. As an addition I would note that using just visual studio is luxury, its one of the fastest compilers (if not the best in this regard) and the speed gain of its precompiled header feature is also the best. You can not include everything in your precompiled header because that makes iterations on your project much slower and uncomfortable. If you include something in your pch then a single unit compilation (ctrl+f7 in VS) wont detect the changes in headers that are referenced by the pch. OK, then you recompile the pch as well, but thats quite cumbersome. Instead I mostly put the headers of other referenced libraries the pch of a given library, thats often a good tradeoff in a well organized project where inter-library includes and predeclarations are used well without unnecessary header-from-header includes. I have a more comprehensive list of reasonings against headers, please see the link below instead of reading this flame war, this is just pointless spinning around a small thing I've mentioned earlier. http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/4377527/Re-What-makes-C-and-Cplusplus-a-good-language.aspx
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One programming language is not better than other. Use the right tool for the right job. PS: Note that ANYTHING is better than JAVA though. This is an exception.
"Real men drive manual transmission" - Rajesh.
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The C and C++ languages are disastrous. They leave so many doors open for bugs and programming mistakes and they have other design failures (like header files that terribly slow down the compile time). The only valid reason for their existence is that most of today's libraries and operating systems are written using these languages. The interface of the majority of libraries and operating system APIs are still C based. Even if you try to replace these languages I think you need 3 different languages to build a whole operating system up on top of bare hardware. A minimal amount of assembly to communicate with hardware, a thin layer of relatively high level but unsafe language that allows for manual memory management in the low-level part of the operating system, and a high level safe language that can be used to write the top level of the operating system and the user programs. C/C++ could be something like the middle from these 3 languages but it would be easier to design a much better language than C/C++ with the same capabilities. Again, the only reason for the existence of C/C++ is massive amount of legacy code. EDIT: This post of mine became quite 'popular', for this reason I would like to link one of my other posts that contains a more comprehensive (but not full) list of my reasonings at the end of this quite long debate: http://www.codeproject.com/Messages/4377527/Re-What-makes-C-and-Cplusplus-a-good-language.aspx[^] Also would like to mention that I have extensive background in low level programming including assembly, C, and C++, reverse engineering and I'm not a 'just because'-type of hater of C/C++ who used only scripts and managed languages - I don't hate C/C++ at all. I respect these languages because they have been fun for me to program in, they helped the world to become better, but we have to see their obvious defects as well. Thanks for reading.
I think this is one of the reasons its popular: http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=4378061#xx4378061xx[^]
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I think this is one of the reasons its popular: http://www.codeproject.com/Lounge.aspx?msg=4378061#xx4378061xx[^]
I thought there is something like this goin' on. That's okay. :-)
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I thought there is something like this goin' on. That's okay. :-)
Just though you should know :)
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Just though you should know :)
Thank you! :-)
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Can someone tell me why C++ and C programming languages are used than any other programming languages, what can these languages do that others can't. I do know that C can create drivers or system files, which is very important when you become serious about your projects. But why is the industry still use it? And will C or C++ ever die, even though it's a non-stop updating language everyday, and what other languages update just like C/C++. EDIT: While also asking this question, will C++/CLI take over or kill out Standard/Win32 C++? Cause I'm on a website called Codejock Software, looking for a ribbon control to work for Standard/Win32 C++ only, and I can't find it. Most of the controls are only made for C++/CLI.
Simple Thanks and Regards, Brandon T. H. Programming in C and C++ now, now developing applications, services and drivers (and maybe some kernel modules...psst kernel-mode drivers...psst). Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas Edison
1. Compatibility. If you want code to run on different architectures (X86, ARM, PIC, etc) and different operating systems, C (and sometimes C++) is the only way to go. 2. Performance. Predictable, excelent performance. Unrestricted use of memory and system resources. 3. Libraries (GLib, STL, etc). 4. Huge codebases. 5. Games (most games are done in C++). 6. Flexibility. C++ for example, doesn't impose "objects" and "interfaces". You can write code "the way you want" mixing objects, procedures and templates. You can write abstract code or go directly to asm in the same project. C tops in portability. C++ tops in flexibility. In these areas they have little competition (if any). Both usually top in performance (there are exceptions, but they are that, exceptions). That said, they are complex and require discipline. They are error prone. They are difficult to master (years). They don't have "unique" GUI or libraries. They are not controlled or improved by any corporation. They move at slow pace, considering that improvements should not break existing software.
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
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Well, up until now we basically havent listed any useful stuff for the OP about C/C++ benefits/defects. We just continued a totally unneded flame war that started from my statement about C/C++ headers so now I'm going to give a random list of some useful stuff about defects without attempting to be comprehensive because that would be too long. Today it would be quite reasonable to use a "fixed/repaired" version of C without most of its defects - the same is true for C++. Of course no language is perfect but the number of C/C++ defects are unreasonable in a modern widely used general purpose language. There are several obvious bugs just alone in C that are directly inherited by C++. My favorite is: The Most Expensive One-byte Mistake[^] The simple C language alone allows for a lot of programming errors most of which could be eliminated just by making the language more strict. I link a list of C programming errors that can be committed easily and accidently: http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/topten.html[^] Previously I mentioned header files that started a dispute. Some people would argue that headers are good because they separate the interface for reading. I think this is rather a personal preference - with todays tools you can esily extract such information on the fly for languages with better design like C# and Java as well where full runtime type information is available in the ide basically all the time. Even if you prefer header files, there are other languages that implement it in a much better way, I would compare C/C++ headers to assembly text file includes (containing full fledged C source code). (My favorite and silently compiling include related bug was when I found an anonymous namespace in a header, imagine what happens in this case...). Declarations in headers are not guaranteed to match cpp content if a mistake is made not to mention hidden dependencies. I would even question the readability of C++ header files that contain not only public/protected stuff but private and implementation details too (inlined functions -most notably templates - and data members are of course separated from actual implementation of the class methods). Headers and macros held back the development of C/C
C headers provide portability. There are LOTs of C compilers. Headers provide an easy way to build a C compiler for any PIC, ARM, X86, (name your own) architecture. It's not about the developer. It's about the CPU/Memory. About the C/C++ to machine conversion. Headers give a lot of headaches to developers, but developers pay that price to see their code run "everywhere" and not have to rewrite ALL the code every 2 years (for other architecture). Now you tell me that developers should have better tools. And they have. They have a lot of other languages that don't keep the "header" problem. The slow, very basic, error prone compiling. But that languages don't have the portability of C/C++ headers. Portability cannot be enforced. It is the result of ease of implementation of a language for an architecture. C/C++ compiler based approach is unmatched in this area.
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
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Well, up until now we basically havent listed any useful stuff for the OP about C/C++ benefits/defects. We just continued a totally unneded flame war that started from my statement about C/C++ headers so now I'm going to give a random list of some useful stuff about defects without attempting to be comprehensive because that would be too long. Today it would be quite reasonable to use a "fixed/repaired" version of C without most of its defects - the same is true for C++. Of course no language is perfect but the number of C/C++ defects are unreasonable in a modern widely used general purpose language. There are several obvious bugs just alone in C that are directly inherited by C++. My favorite is: The Most Expensive One-byte Mistake[^] The simple C language alone allows for a lot of programming errors most of which could be eliminated just by making the language more strict. I link a list of C programming errors that can be committed easily and accidently: http://www.andromeda.com/people/ddyer/topten.html[^] Previously I mentioned header files that started a dispute. Some people would argue that headers are good because they separate the interface for reading. I think this is rather a personal preference - with todays tools you can esily extract such information on the fly for languages with better design like C# and Java as well where full runtime type information is available in the ide basically all the time. Even if you prefer header files, there are other languages that implement it in a much better way, I would compare C/C++ headers to assembly text file includes (containing full fledged C source code). (My favorite and silently compiling include related bug was when I found an anonymous namespace in a header, imagine what happens in this case...). Declarations in headers are not guaranteed to match cpp content if a mistake is made not to mention hidden dependencies. I would even question the readability of C++ header files that contain not only public/protected stuff but private and implementation details too (inlined functions -most notably templates - and data members are of course separated from actual implementation of the class methods). Headers and macros held back the development of C/C
pasztorpisti wrote:
I'm open to any reasoning against the above list
In terms of the errors - those are not errors that show up for me. The errors that I must find involve logic errors. Whether those errors are made by me or others. And if you spend significant amounts of time day to day on errors like those then at best that I can judge you have a problem that can only be solved with a change in process.
pasztorpisti wrote:
In my opinion tools (including dev envs and languages) are very important.
I can and I have achieve orders of magnitude increase in performance by changing requirements. The only way I have ever achieved anything close to that at the implementation level is because the design itself that lead to the implementation was wrong. Other than that implementation improvements can only lead to small increases when everything else is held steady. The following is what impacts performance and even project success. 1. Requirements - most impact 2. Architecture 3. Design 4. Implementation - the least impact. 1/2 are not impacted by language although 2 might be impact by technology. 3 can be impacted by technology but only minimally by language. 4 is impacted by language. So the reason language as less impact is because it does.
pasztorpisti wrote:
I think every company that continues other than garage development has some kind of dev process,
Every company has a process. Some companies have a formalized process. The only measured and significant improvements in development have come from formalizing the process and improving that. Far as I can remember improvement measures consisted of fewer bugs (detected at various points in life cycle), short delivery time, reduced cost and reduced maintenance cost.
pasztorpisti wrote:
but that is another dimension of the problem of cutting development time and providing quality on a completely different level: management
No it isn't. Again the only impact from the studies that I read was based on process improvements. Tools of any sort had nothing to do with it.
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C headers provide portability. There are LOTs of C compilers. Headers provide an easy way to build a C compiler for any PIC, ARM, X86, (name your own) architecture. It's not about the developer. It's about the CPU/Memory. About the C/C++ to machine conversion. Headers give a lot of headaches to developers, but developers pay that price to see their code run "everywhere" and not have to rewrite ALL the code every 2 years (for other architecture). Now you tell me that developers should have better tools. And they have. They have a lot of other languages that don't keep the "header" problem. The slow, very basic, error prone compiling. But that languages don't have the portability of C/C++ headers. Portability cannot be enforced. It is the result of ease of implementation of a language for an architecture. C/C++ compiler based approach is unmatched in this area.
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
ErnestoNet wrote:
C headers provide portability.
Not exactly sure what you are claiming but as stated it is wrong. C, the language (not just headers) provides some portability but it is not guaranteed nor even easy and most of that is achieved through the standard libraries.
ErnestoNet wrote:
C/C++ compiler based approach is unmatched in this area.
No idea what you are talking about. Line for line, Java is more portable than C/C++. C/C++ both have features that are specifically not portable in comparison to Java.
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C headers provide portability. There are LOTs of C compilers. Headers provide an easy way to build a C compiler for any PIC, ARM, X86, (name your own) architecture. It's not about the developer. It's about the CPU/Memory. About the C/C++ to machine conversion. Headers give a lot of headaches to developers, but developers pay that price to see their code run "everywhere" and not have to rewrite ALL the code every 2 years (for other architecture). Now you tell me that developers should have better tools. And they have. They have a lot of other languages that don't keep the "header" problem. The slow, very basic, error prone compiling. But that languages don't have the portability of C/C++ headers. Portability cannot be enforced. It is the result of ease of implementation of a language for an architecture. C/C++ compiler based approach is unmatched in this area.
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
It's not the C headers that provide portability. Nothing proves that better than the existence of crossplatform languages without headers.
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It's not the C headers that provide portability. Nothing proves that better than the existence of crossplatform languages without headers.
Text based compilers are easier to write that binary based compilers. The headers approach is easy to build a compiler from. C is a very simple language to write a compiler. There are LOTS of C compilers. More compilers provide better portability. Portability is also usually the result of compatibility. So the reason why the headers approach doesn't change... There are not many cross platform/architecture languages. Name a crossplatform language and I'll compare that to C in terms of portability....
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
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ErnestoNet wrote:
C headers provide portability.
Not exactly sure what you are claiming but as stated it is wrong. C, the language (not just headers) provides some portability but it is not guaranteed nor even easy and most of that is achieved through the standard libraries.
ErnestoNet wrote:
C/C++ compiler based approach is unmatched in this area.
No idea what you are talking about. Line for line, Java is more portable than C/C++. C/C++ both have features that are specifically not portable in comparison to Java.
Headers provide an easy "standard" to build a compiler from. If there are more compilers, there is more portability. Java is not more portable than C. Java is (that I know) very portable, just not more portable than C. C has compilers built from a lot of companies for a variety of products (PIC, PIC32, ARM, X86, etc). Java mostly from Sun for X86.
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
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pasztorpisti wrote:
enough to say that C/C++ is a bad choice.
When it was chosen, it was the only choice.
pasztorpisti wrote:
In theory it would be easy to design a language that is suitable for writing operating system code without several defects
I worked for a company (Sperry) that did just that. They spent thousands developing a language that had no practical use except for writing their operating system, which was fast reaching the end of its useful life.
pasztorpisti wrote:
I think my statement isn't unfair at all.
I meant it was unfair in that you were judging a language developed in the 80s by the standards of today's knowledge and technology.
One of these days I'm going to think of a really clever signature.
Richard MacCutchan wrote:
When it was chosen, it was the only choice.
Really? The Multics operating system was being programmed in PL/1. The Burroughs B-5000 and subsequent machines had their operating systems coded in Algol with extensions. And a damn fine operating system it was. My alma mater, Case Western Reserve University, implemented an operating system with an Algol-like language called Chili. All of this while C was just beginning to happen and Unix was not yet born.
Richard MacCutchan wrote:
I meant it was unfair in that you were judging a language developed in the 80s by the standards of today's knowledge and technology.
Oh! Does that mean you will be saying nice things about Fortran and COBOL? Or, at least, refrain from saying nasty things about them? ;P
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Text based compilers are easier to write that binary based compilers. The headers approach is easy to build a compiler from. C is a very simple language to write a compiler. There are LOTS of C compilers. More compilers provide better portability. Portability is also usually the result of compatibility. So the reason why the headers approach doesn't change... There are not many cross platform/architecture languages. Name a crossplatform language and I'll compare that to C in terms of portability....
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
If we speak of writing a compiler that will be used to compile thousands of other programs, then its worth investing time to make the compiler as good as possible otherwise you will pay the price as many times as you compile/develop a program or more importantly a useful ide for the language. I've never argued against the portability of ansi C, lets consider that as a positive trait of the language but that has really nothing to do with the header files. For example freepascal is crossplatform and it has no header files, the same is true for java+jvm and .net mono + its languages that have quite extensive and unified crossplatform library compared to that of ansi C.
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If we speak of writing a compiler that will be used to compile thousands of other programs, then its worth investing time to make the compiler as good as possible otherwise you will pay the price as many times as you compile/develop a program or more importantly a useful ide for the language. I've never argued against the portability of ansi C, lets consider that as a positive trait of the language but that has really nothing to do with the header files. For example freepascal is crossplatform and it has no header files, the same is true for java+jvm and .net mono + its languages that have quite extensive and unified crossplatform library compared to that of ansi C.
Consider that C can work in microchips with very little memory and a very reduced CPU instruction set (for example http://www.microchip.com/[^]). Java and .NET are very different that C. They are "platforms", not languages. Java and .NET runtime is in the 20Mb+ size libraries. Latest versions don't support old operating systems. rt.jar is 42.6Mb (compressed!!). Java and .NET strings are inmutable, etc. I'm not defending C, but most modern languages aren't languages, they are frameworks. And C/C++ are few of the languages out there not owned by a corporation (.NET-Microsoft, Java-Oracle). C/C++ do not target app developers. They target compiler developers, OS developers, driver developers and libraries developers. I guess thats why C tops TIOBE (and C++ is 4º).
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
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Consider that C can work in microchips with very little memory and a very reduced CPU instruction set (for example http://www.microchip.com/[^]). Java and .NET are very different that C. They are "platforms", not languages. Java and .NET runtime is in the 20Mb+ size libraries. Latest versions don't support old operating systems. rt.jar is 42.6Mb (compressed!!). Java and .NET strings are inmutable, etc. I'm not defending C, but most modern languages aren't languages, they are frameworks. And C/C++ are few of the languages out there not owned by a corporation (.NET-Microsoft, Java-Oracle). C/C++ do not target app developers. They target compiler developers, OS developers, driver developers and libraries developers. I guess thats why C tops TIOBE (and C++ is 4º).
it´s the journey, not the destination that matters
Thats true, I'm still sad about how much better could C be (including the related devenvs) without losing its current power. I also treat both java and C# as fully fledged languages, they are just higher level (that is quite ok in the context they are used) and they aim a different target. Those languages provide very good development environment and incorporated very good ideas related to language design.