Unfortunately, programming style and programming languages go hand in hand. And the C++ die-hards feel revolted by the 'programming style' of deep inheritance hierarchies, stilted template support, and non-deterministic destructors that are the unfortunate result of language like Java and C#. C++ enthusiasts ARE actually supporting a programming style rather than the programming language. The problem is that C++ is the only language that supports this programming style. Of course, it IS true that Java/C# fanatics usually ONLY know how to suck milk from a feeder and wet their pampers because momma virtual machine is there to clean the shit after them. Doh!!!

I'll one up the statement in the message title. But first, some history. The "C++ is difficult" crap first emerged with the rise of Java with proponents screaming their heads off about how it is absolutely essential to free programmers from worrying about memory de-allocation, that multiple inheritance is evil, that C++ suffers from feature creep, and that it is not a purely object-oriented programming language. A cult was formed around this, and as is true about must cults, there were strong commercial interests at work that found the patronizing of this cult as an easy way of subtly promoting selfish aims. Those who think memory de-allocation is a huge productivity killer, I think they have pure shit instead of gray matter in their brains. Terms like 'dung headed', 'shit brained', and 'crap headed' should be used to describe these pansies who should be doing janitorial work rather than programming. And that is because they don't understand 'resource acquisition is initialization'. The modern definition of a truly object-oriented programming language is that it should support ALL the constructs of UML. This means supporting multiple inheritance of both concrete and abstract classes, which means Java is also not a truly object-oriented. Take that you Java suckers!!!! And finally, the amount of bloat in BOTH language features AND libararies in both Java AND C# is testament to the fact that in reality blasphemers blaspheme to try and hide their illegitimate births. Enough said!!!!

What is a book that comprehensively treats design principles such as: 1. Open/Close Principle 2. Liskov Substituion Principle and others like these. I know Heads First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design has a chapter on this, but is there a whole book dedicated to just design principles? Or at least a book that provides more material than Heads First. There ARE books available on design patterns but I can't find ones on design principles...

Would somebody care to comment on the difference between generalization, abstraction, and encapsulation?

We are writing a server app for Linux in C++. In order to avoid reinventing the wheel we want to use some kind of library that already implements common architectural patterns and provides solutions to problems that arise during server development. The Java and C# community are well endowed in this regard. Is there anything similar available for C++??? We did find IBM's Reusable Server Kernel (RSK) but unfortunately that is meant solely for their VM systems. A similar truly cross-platform library would be just what we are looking for. Thanks in advance for your help.