On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 9:28 AM, Michael Wojcik <michael.woj...@microfocus.com> wrote: > This is not the place to debate the relative merits of C, C++, or the > chimerical monstrosity created by pretending the former is the latter. > Suffice it to say that there are a number of people who do not agree with the > claims you make for treating C as C++, and they are generally people who > actually understand the C language. > > -- Well Michael, you're partly right. This isn't the place to debate the relative merits of C and C++, or any other language.
But it smells a bit of extreme arrogance to suggest that those who disagree with you about the relation between C and C++ do not actually understand C. Really? You can't be serious. I have used both for decades. There is no doubt that they are different programming languages (so I don't fully disagree with you, but rather think your position is grossly over-stated). At the same time, they have so much in common that for many software engineers, C can, for practical purposes, be regarded as a useful subset of C++. This is certainly true in the suite of problem domains I usually find myself working on. But, no one would claim C IS C++, because C doesn't have templates, and thus template meta-programming, or classes, &c. Even though I have been using C for decades, there are parts of the language I have never used. The same is true for C++. And, for those parts of each language that I do use, C is in fact a subset of C++ and I really do not care about the differences between the two as I do not use those parts of either language anyway. I am too busy getting production code developed, tested and deployed to spend much time worrying about such things: software that generates anywhere from hundreds of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars in revenue for the people for whom I develop the software. I am quite content to let language lawyers in academia argue about the differences between the languages (in the taxonomy of anything - natural and artificial languages, living things, academic taxonomists, there are lumpers who overemphasize similarities and splitters who overemphasize differences, and never will the two camps agree, though they DO tend to produce humorous flame wars that make all involved look foolish), but, being academics, they are not primarily focused on producing production quality software. The original question regarding C++ here involved the observation that use of C++, and specifically it's support for namespaces, may help address some, but not all, of the problems related to naming collisions. That observation is right, but it obviously will carry a cost. Whether that cost is warranted is a matter of opinion. Certainly it ought not be ruled out until all other options for solving the problem at hand have been examined and one, or a small set, of the available options have been demonstrated as providing the best solution and the least cost. It will be interesting to watch how the library evolves over the next decade. Cheers Ted -- R.E.(Ted) Byers, Ph.D.,Ed.D. ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org User Support Mailing List openssl-users@openssl.org Automated List Manager majord...@openssl.org
