From -5036047558977751231 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,d733139e7969f81d X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: f78e5,d733139e7969f81d X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1994-10-02 05:08:44 PST Newsgroups: comp.std.c++,comp.lang.c++ Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!ihnp4.ucsd.edu!munnari.oz.au!cs.mu.OZ.AU!munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU!fjh From: fjh@munta.cs.mu.OZ.AU (Fergus Henderson) Subject: Re: How relevant is ANSI C++? (Re: Is STL a good standard?) Message-ID: <9427522.18329@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU> Sender: news@cs.mu.OZ.AU Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia References: Date: Sun, 2 Oct 1994 12:02:12 GMT Lines: 31 Xref: bga.com comp.std.c++:4724 comp.lang.c++:31368 tmb@arolla.idiap.ch (Thomas M. Breuel) writes: >rfg@netcom.com (Ronald F. Guilmette) writes: >|tmb@idiap.ch writes: >|>C++ compiler writing is already a nightmare. And the Ellis and >|>Detlefs proposal is not all that hard to implement. >| >|_Everthing_ is `easy' as long as you are not the schmuck who has to >|implement it. > >Language design should be oriented towards the user, not the >implementor. If the implementor doesn't "like" implementing GC, too >bad for him: he should change jobs. > >What matters to the user is what the cost and the benefit of a >potential new language feature is. In the case of the Ellis and >Detlefs proposal, the cost is low and the benefit is considerable. As you yourself wrote, C++ compiler writing is already a nightmare. Increasing the implementation difficulty has a very high cost. The result is low-quality implementations. As a user, I would certainly like to have garbage collection. But having a high-quality implementation of the rest of the language is more important to me. You are right that language design should be oriented towards the user. But keeping implementation difficulty as low as possible is essential to satisfy user demands for reliable, efficient, high-quality implementations on a wide variety of platforms. -- Fergus Henderson - fjh@munta.cs.mu.oz.au