Something I ran into that the group might enjoy:

From: http://www.techreview.com/InfoTech/17831/

"Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of the C++ programming language, defends his legacy and examines what's wrong with most software code."

As always, Slashdot has some colorful coverage on this:

http://it.slashdot.org/it/06/12/05/0045234.shtml

"MIT's Technology Review has a Q&A with C++ inventor Bjarne Stroustrup. Highlights include Bjarne's answers on the trade-offs involved in the design of C++, and how they apply today, and his thoughts on the solution to the problems. From the interview: 'Software developers have become adept at the difficult art of building reasonably reliable systems out of unreliable parts. The snag is that often we do not know exactly how we did it.'"

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo

On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:55:09 -0800, Pragma <ericanderton@yahoo.removeme.com> wrote:

> Something I ran into that the group might enjoy:
>
> From: http://www.techreview.com/InfoTech/17831/
>

Off-topic observation:

I love the way the threading works in the comments section of this article!  You just click on the comment and it immediatly shows the comment text.  Clicking it again collapses it. You can do that for each comment. Now that's a great system!  To bad the D newsgroup couldn't do something like that for its web interface.

-JJR

"Pragma" <ericanderton@yahoo.removeme.com> wrote in message news:el489h$1f7a$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Something I ran into that the group might enjoy:
>
> From: http://www.techreview.com/InfoTech/17831/
>
> "Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of the C++ programming language, defends his legacy and examines what's wrong with most software code."

Bjarne: "There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses."

And for C++ programmers, those are the same languages.  ;)

When will Bjarne see that C++ is a festering homonculus of a language from which pours forth a black bile of rot and putrescence?  Okay, maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolistic, but..

John Reimer wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:55:09 -0800, Pragma <ericanderton@yahoo.removeme.com> wrote:
> 
>> Something I ran into that the group might enjoy:
>>
>> From: http://www.techreview.com/InfoTech/17831/
>>
> 
> Off-topic observation:
> 
> I love the way the threading works in the comments section of this article!  You just click on the comment and it immediatly shows the comment text.  Clicking it again collapses it. You can do that for each comment. Now that's a great system!  To bad the D newsgroup couldn't do something like that for its web interface.

The new Slashdot interface does the same thing.  I love it.  But I've yet to see a web-based newsreader that does this.  I suppose it would involve the use of all sorts of acronyms I know very little about.


Sean

John Reimer wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:55:09 -0800, Pragma <ericanderton@yahoo.removeme.com> wrote:
> 
>> Something I ran into that the group might enjoy:
>>
>> From: http://www.techreview.com/InfoTech/17831/
>>
> 
> Off-topic observation:
> 
> I love the way the threading works in the comments section of this article!  You just click on the comment and it immediatly shows the comment text.  Clicking it again collapses it. You can do that for each comment. Now that's a great system!  To bad the D newsgroup couldn't do something like that for its web interface.
> 
> -JJR
> 

It's a nice concept, but (IMO) it makes for slow reading if you want to digest an entire thread on-page.  I'd much rather see the posts in full, but have the tree kept for expanding and collapsing threads as I go.

Kind of like a compromise between a TreeView and Slashdot I suppose.

Now, if you want to see something *really slick* for commenting, take a look at JackSlocum's site:

http://www.jackslocum.com/blog/2006/10/09/my-wordpress-comments-system-built-with-yahoo-ui-and-yahooext/

It's pretty script-heavy, but it shows what can be done with AJAX and a solid widget set.  Be sure to check out the "Documentation" section too.

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Pragma" <ericanderton@yahoo.removeme.com> wrote in message news:el489h$1f7a$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> Something I ran into that the group might enjoy:
>>
>> From: http://www.techreview.com/InfoTech/17831/
>>
>> "Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of the C++ programming language, defends his legacy and examines what's wrong with most software code."
> 
> Bjarne: "There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses."
> 
> And for C++ programmers, those are the same languages.  ;)
> 
> When will Bjarne see that C++ is a festering homonculus of a language from which pours forth a black bile of rot and putrescence?  Okay, maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolistic, but.. 
> 
> 

I like how he talks about C++ being 'expert' friendly and having 'expert' level features. Is this just a nice way of saying that the language is difficult to use? :-P

~ Clay

Pragma wrote:
> John Reimer wrote:
>> On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:55:09 -0800, Pragma <ericanderton@yahoo.removeme.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Something I ran into that the group might enjoy:
>>>
>>> From: http://www.techreview.com/InfoTech/17831/
>>>
>>
>> Off-topic observation:
>>
>> I love the way the threading works in the comments section of this article!  You just click on the comment and it immediatly shows the comment text.  Clicking it again collapses it. You can do that for each comment. Now that's a great system!  To bad the D newsgroup couldn't do something like that for its web interface.
>>
>> -JJR
>>
> 
> It's a nice concept, but (IMO) it makes for slow reading if you want to digest an entire thread on-page.  I'd much rather see the posts in full, but have the tree kept for expanding and collapsing threads as I go.
> 
> Kind of like a compromise between a TreeView and Slashdot I suppose.
> 
> Now, if you want to see something *really slick* for commenting, take a look at JackSlocum's site:
> 
> http://www.jackslocum.com/blog/2006/10/09/my-wordpress-comments-system-built-with-yahoo-ui-and-yahooext/
> 
> 
> It's pretty script-heavy, but it shows what can be done with AJAX and a solid widget set.  Be sure to check out the "Documentation" section too.
> 

That site crushed my browser.  I also got the FF2 "runaway script, debug or stop" dialog.

A second visit once everything would theoretically be cached was no better. The google pageads were pretty slow, but things were crushed enough that even Firebug didn't respond very well.  So I couldn't tell if it was a bunch of Ajax calls or what was running so slowly.

BA

clayasaurus wrote:
> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> 
> I like how he talks about C++ being 'expert' friendly and having 'expert' level features. Is this just a nice way of saying that the language is difficult to use? :-P

That's pretty much how I read that too.

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo

Brad Anderson wrote:
> 
> That site crushed my browser.  I also got the FF2 "runaway script, debug or
> stop" dialog.
> 
> A second visit once everything would theoretically be cached was no better.
> The google pageads were pretty slow, but things were crushed enough that even
> Firebug didn't respond very well.  So I couldn't tell if it was a bunch of
> Ajax calls or what was running so slowly.

Sorry about that. I've never had that problem on that site. :(

But then again, the YUI plus Jack's extensions are nothing trivial to load and run.  It's a pretty big library.

-- 
- EricAnderton at yahoo

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Pragma" <ericanderton@yahoo.removeme.com> wrote in message news:el489h$1f7a$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>> Something I ran into that the group might enjoy:
>>
>> From: http://www.techreview.com/InfoTech/17831/
>>
>> "Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of the C++ programming language, defends his legacy and examines what's wrong with most software code."
> 
> Bjarne: "There are just two kinds of languages: the ones everybody complains about and the ones nobody uses."
> 
> And for C++ programmers, those are the same languages.  ;)
> 
> When will Bjarne see that C++ is a festering homonculus of a language from which pours forth a black bile of rot and putrescence?  Okay, maybe I'm being a bit hyperbolistic, but.. 

In Bjarne's defense, I think it's worth noting two things:

* The success of C++ was very much dependent on its acceptance by the C community, and C compatibility was crucial.  Many of the language and syntax compromises were for very legitimate reasons at the time the language was designed.

* Bjarne quite unapologetically designed C++ for expert programmers.  It isn't his fault that the language has become so popular that it is now being used by people who can't tell the dull side of a pointer from, well, the pointy side.

There is no debating the fact that C++ has been an incredible success, and it still has very little competition in many core markets. Personally, my only real problems with the language are that its popularity has driven it to be used in projects and by people where another language would be more suitable, and the language supports such a wide array of programming styles that it is extremely difficult to maintain any kind of design coherence in large team projects.  Also, its age is such that many projects contain code written before templates even existed, and so a substantial codebase follows "old style C++" which is heavy with raw pointers, casts, etc.  In fact, I'm continually amazed at how little new code I see even today that is written using STL components.  IMO this is a strong argument for D's built-in dynamic array support and other features, as there is no doubt in my mind that one of the major problems with C++ is that the language was standardized and in use before the library was up to snuff.  By integrating these features into the core language, Walter has neatly sidestepped this problem and provided a nice, clean syntax for some of the most commonly used programming constructs.


Sean