Aaron Van Couwenberghe wrote: > Polymorphism is such an obvious pillar of structured programming that I > can't understand how anybody could live without it.
Polymorphism is not a pillar of structured programming languages. The major structured programming languages - the Algols, Pascal, C, Modula-2, Ada 83 - didn't have polymorphism. And judging from the number of lines of code in those languages, many people could live with the degree of polymorphism implementable in those languages - which is quite a bit. > > > In particular, there are established ways of linking programs written in > > any language against C based libraries. As far as I'm aware doing the same > > to C++ (or other object-oriented languages) is a pain in the neck. > > This is simply not true. Why? Tell me how I pass a C++ object to C, Fortran or Pascal. > I have grown increasingly aware of FUD of this type about C++ and OO > languages. OO is designed to *increase* interoperability, flexibility, and > extensibility -- definately not the other way around. Windows NT was designed to be a stable operating system, the best in the world. Designs fail. So far I haven't seen where OO increases interoperability between languages.
