On 05/09/2013 10:48, Matthew Brush wrote:
On 13-09-05 02:26 AM, Nick Treleaven wrote:
On 01/09/2013 02:36, Matthew Brush wrote:
On 13-08-29 05:08 AM, Nick Treleaven wrote:
On 29/08/2013 02:39, Matthew Brush wrote:
[...]
If we were to use C++, I think it'd be pointless to limit it to CFront/CwithClasses-style 1980's C++. We should use common/standard stuff like standard library containers, inheritance (maybe not multipl-inheritance), the class keyword, templates (where it makes sense), exceptions, etc. The issues/limits being discussed in this thread are issues long since considered "resolved" or "non-issues" for a long time for desktop software (and since a *long* time even before Geany's first line of code was written :). The style of code I read on the net and in talks and books and stuff is modern (ie. >= C++98) style C++ and I'd expect that's what the bulk of C++-using contributors would be used to using.
Idiomatic C++ takes a *lot* of learning and experience to get right for someone coming from C.
Do you think there's more C-only programmers out there contributing to desktop application projects than C++ programmers? I honestly don't know but my instinct says there isn't.
If you mean open source projects, then yes. Somewhat difficult to measure, but some (possibly flawed) stats:
Here C has at least twice the share of C++: http://lang-index.sourceforge.net/
In terms of noise on the web, here C also has approaching twice that of C++: http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
It would be better (but even harder to measure) to compare desktop applications, as I mentioned, like Geany since this is an area where C++ makes a lot of more sense compared to C, and there's a lot of excellent C++ GUI toolkits like Qt, WxWidgets, FLTK, FOX, GTKmm, WTL, etc. Compared to C, where GTK+ is about the only actually good toolkit I've ever come across.
You don't need to be a GUI programmer to make good contributions to Geany.
Also even if there were more C++ programmers, it would still be much easier for a C++ programmer to write C than vice versa.
Yeah maybe, although if you learned C++ first, using C is fairly foreign and weird I'm sure. Also all of the other languages that support modern/more programming paradigms would probably make an easier transition to C++ than C.
The STL is almost unique. Only D has something similar. Also C++-style RAII is not commonly found in popular languages.