Really const correctness in the first place belonged in the Objective-C group.
<subtopic id="not meaning to be rude"> If you read the rest of my post I'm talking about immutability and const correctness, so although this comment on popularity came first it was just a subtopic and you have picked on this as a sub topic of the post rather than the meat in the rest of it. Perhaps if I'd made a point about Windows and mass stupidity it would have been better. </subtopic> Really, what I am concerned about is the thought that we should add things to Obj-C just because C++ has it. Language features require much more thought than that. While all the flaws of C are necessarily preserved in Obj-C, Obj-C defines a much more disciplined use of the language. Almost all of the bad features are avoided in normal practice and an OC programmer almost has to go out of their way to use the garbage. That's one of the staggeringly good things about OC as designed by Brad Cox and adapted by NeXT/Apple. C++ is just one of the biggest messes in the programming world. Why? Complexity, complexity, complexity. I mentioned the Crockford series for three reasons - 1) his thesis that programmers have always been resistant to better things; 2) his showing how to avoid deficiencies in a language (the example is JavaScript); 3) how most deficiencies in JavaScript actually come from C (via Java in some cases) and how C had bad things included from FORTRAN and assembler that should not have been (because of (1)). In the context of security, Crockford makes the point that complexity is the tool of the enemy. With simplicity we can solve the problems. So my concern with the way this thread was going was that it became "Let's just add the complexity of C++ into OC." That is not healthy and if followed could destroy the relative simplicity and power of OC. Crockford is a very friendly and subtle speaker, but pulls no punches about the state of the Web and why most of it is rubbish, filled with security holes, etc. He has so many lessons on so many levels and I recommend it to the Cocoa community, even though not directly Cocoa related, but his thinking is relevant to so many things and most of us have to be involved in the web in one way or the other. Thanks Ian P.S sounds like you still need to go and study up some material on the B5000 to see how a really elegant design of 50 years ago is still way ahead of its time and would solve many of the security and other problems of today. I apologize if I have helped close your mind to this. http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/burroughs/B5000_5500_5700/Organick_B5700_B6700_1973.pdf Stories of the B5000 and People Who Were There On 20 Mar 2012, at 02:55, Jens Alfke wrote: > > On Mar 19, 2012, at 4:51 AM, Ian Joyner wrote: > > > Please take this off-list, or to some more appropriate list (I think it’s > already deep-ended past objc-language; is there an algol-like-language list?) > Otherwise we’ll be hearing about the Burroughs B500 soon, and I don’t think I > can take that again. > > I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m about at my personal limit of patience with > the amount of off-topic stuff one has to wade through on the Apple lists > lately (especially xcode-users, but here too.) I’m not a moderator and I’m > not here as part of my job description; I hang out when I have time to and > mostly try to answer questions to help people out. If the list gets too noisy > I tend to give up and ignore it for weeks or months before coming back. I’m > sure there are other experienced people here who do the same. It’s to > everyone’s benefit if the list stays on topic so that people who need help > can get it and people who want to offer help can give it. > > —Jens _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
