On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Richard Kenner <ken...@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> wrote: >> would you mind elaborating on the philosophical issue here? > > Yes, I would mind, because it's not MY issue, but RMS's! I don't want > to speculate why RMS might not want to use C++
That is non argument: RMS has not not contributed any executable code for GCC, and even less the C++ front-end, for YEARS now. > >> > Similarly, which of two possible algorithms to use *can* be a >> > *detailed* technical issue, but stops being one if one of those two >> > choices has a patent issue. >> >> By your analogy, which part of C++ do you consider >> has patent issue compared to Ada? > > I don't follow. My analogy was just to show two areas where what might be > considered "technical" decisions might touch on something larger, in one > case philosophy and in another patents. > > If you're asking why RMS didn't object to the Ada front end being written > in Ada, the answer is that he would have preferred C, but it's always > acceptable to write all or part of a compiler in its own language. E.g., and it's acceptable for Ada, but for not for C++. > COBOL would be an odd choice of a language to write a compiler in, but > quite reasonable if the language you're compiling is COBOL (and there is > such). Also, there's a difference between starting from scratch with some > non-C language and converting a C program into one in a different language > (note RMS's "at least for programs that are presently written in C"). > > -- Gaby
