Re: of applications for gnustep...

[Philip Mötteli]

Am Freitag, 13.06.03, um 18:57 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Chris B. 
Vetter:
> On Fri, 13 Jun 2003 08:32:01 +0200
> Philip Mötteli <moetteli.bulk@bluewin.ch> wrote:
> [...]
>
> I know, we've been through this before ...

Yes, I seem to remember this too.   :-)


> > > It's a marriage
> > In my eyes, it's not ieven a marriage. It's just, that you don't need
> > a bridge.
>
> Yes, that's true.
>
> However, C++ is an abomination. It's horrible syntax lacks an intuitive
> way to use it (call it style, interface, whatever), it lacks a grammar
> specifying the language and as a result you can't even tell if a given
> line of code is valid...
>
> C++ completely misses the point what OO is all about. Yes, I'm 
> referring
> to Alan Kay's legendary comment:
>
>         I invented the term 'object oriented programming' and I can tell
>         you I didn't have C++ in mind.
>
> C++ is one big mess of afterthoughts. C++ is evil and should be buried
> at midnight under a full moon in an abandoned graveyard. And best be
> forgotten as well.

I do completely agree. And I would even add something: As someone, who 
believes, that the most important part of an oo-program is its design: 
It would be impossible for me to make any project in C++, because the 
language is so little oo, that every design is just a huge tinkering 
with, in other languages not needed, design patterns. It becomes an 
unmaintainable mess.


> Why I bother?
>
> Yes, Objective-C++ will allow you to use existing libraries and
> frameworks like WebCore -- which shouldn't have been written in the
> first place (in Objective-C++ that is).

You mean the authors of KHTML shouldn't have written it in C++ or Apple 
should have written an ObjC-"KTHTML"?


> My worst fear is that people starting to program in Objective-C will 
> see
> Objective-C++ code and assume that it is valid Objective-C.

I'm not so pessimistic. I don't think, that any ObjC programmer, even 
one, that comes from a C++ background would like to write one more line 
of code, than absolutely needed, in C++. So you usually end up with 
having a wrapper object, that contains C++ and at the same time ObjC 
ivars. And in one direction from this object, everything is C++ and in 
the other direction, everything is ObjC.
So except if the newbie is only looking at the wrapper class, I don't 
think this is a problem.


> I have no problem with mixing Foobar.m and Barfoo.cpp in one project.
> However, I do have a problem with Foobar.mm (or whatever today's file
> extension for Objective-C++ is).

Well writing a wrapper in C wouldn't be any nicer to look at and would 
need much more effort, not to talk about implementing the whole thing 
yourself.


Am Freitag, 13.06.03, um 19:23 Uhr (Europe/Zurich) schrieb Mondragon, 
Ian:
> as someone that's had to deal with objc++ in a realworld setting,

Me too, I fortunately only had to deal with it once, so far.


> i can say
> that it can be both very ugly

I completely agree.


> and very troublesome.

As I already say, I try to concentrate the mixing in as few classes as 
possible. So, in my case I ended up with about 3 classes. Which wasn't 
so troublesome.


> sure, there are some
> perks to it, but i would only recommend active objc++ development in a
> dire-need, last-resort type of situation.

Absolutely! If I have two almost equal libraries, I would always prefer 
the one written in ObjC.
But in my case, there's only one library and it's written in C++. My 
longterm goal though, would be to rewrite it smoothly in ObjC. But at 
the moment, I just do not have the time for such a project. Especially, 
because I also need to reengineer it (I have no documentation).


Re
Phil