On 2007-07-13, Chris Carlen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > John Nagle wrote: >> You can sometimes get better performance in C++ than in C, >> because C++ has "inline". Inline expansion happens before >> optimization, so you can have abstractions that cost nothing. > > That's interesting. But why is this any different than using > preprocessor macros in C?
This is OT, however: inline functions have a few benefits over preprocessor macros. 1. They are type-safe. 2. They never evaluate their arguments more than once. 3. They don't require protective parentheses to avoid precedence errors. 4. In C++, they have the additional benefit of being defined in a namespace, rather than applying globally to a file. As an experienced C programmer you're probably used to coping with the problems of preprocessor macros, and may even take advantage of their untyped nature occasionally. Even C++ programmers still use the advisedly. > I will keep an open mind however, that until I work with it for > some time there is still the possibility that I will have some > light go on about OOP. So don't worry, I'm not rejecting your > input. In my opinion OOP is usefully thought of as a type of design rather than a means of implementation. You can implement an OO design in a procedural langauge just fine, but presumably an OO programming language facilitates the implementation of an OO design better than does a procedural language. Going back to the stack machine question, and using it as an example: Assume you design your program as a state machine. Wouldn't it be easier to implement in a (hypothetical) state-machine-based programming language than in a procedural one? I think John was insinuating that a state-machine is more like an object than it is like a procedure. -- Neil Cerutti -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
