Kevin Fisher <kgf at golden.net> said:
>> meant to make things simpler. C++ is a horrible complex mess - QED. 
>
>This is true.  Wasn't Bjarn's original goal just to provide a new "style"
>of programming to C (ie to bolt a new concept onto the hull of the old)?
>What it's become...well, we don't need to go there...
>
In all fairness: I remember being quite excited as a C programmer about
C++; however, that was quite early in the process (let's say that my
first C++ compiler was a port with a couple of mates from a bootleg
CFront source tape to Xenix ;-)). The idea, to give C-programmers object
extensions but at the same time leave them with full control over what's
happening, was valid and not implemented all that bad.

However, the mistake that has been made with C and has been made over and over
again with C++ is to abuse it as an application-level programming language.
That's where it all started to go wrong. If there is one thing Bjarne is to be
blamed for, I think it is sailing along with this madness, not with coming up
with C++ in the first place.

I did some low-level work with C++ (v1), and that usually resulted
in extremely clean code - compared with C. For me, that was mission
accomplished. However, somehow any attempt to write higher-level stuff
failed.

>I seem to remember a discussion on slashdot about how you can do OO
>with straight C if you code it a certain way.... sort of "OO programming:
>it's a way of life", not so much the language you use, but rather how
>you think and organize things.
>
Yup. Right on. I've even heard people claim they applied OO-approaches to
their assembler code, and I believe them.

-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg at cdegroot.com>
GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B