C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

[peter koch]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

On 20 Jul., 21:59, James Kanze <james.ka...@gm ail.comwrote:

On Jul 20, 10:50 am, "Alf P. Steinbach" <al...@start.no wrote:
>

* James Kanze:

C was never really a good general purpose language.  It was
never used (nor even usable) in commercial software, for
example.

I'm not sure that statement is valid.
It would be very surprising, to say the least, if no or just a
very few commercial applications were written in C.

>
There are certainly a few.  Way back when, however, the X/Open
group proposed standardizing a form of Cobol (under Unix!)
because C was felt to be unusable for business applications.
>
At least certain types of business applications require some
sort of decimal type.  If the language doesn't have it built in
(as Cobol and PL-1 did), and it doesn't have operator
overloading, expressions quickly become unreadable.  For those
applications, at least, if the language doesn't have a built-in
decimal type, and it doesn't have operator overloading, then
it's really unusable for those applications (although you'll
doubtlessly find some masocists doing it).
>

That was the case for "my" financial application. It had decimal-based
arithmetic, and writing expressions in C was
add(multiply(a, b),divide(c,d)) instead of a*b+ c/d. But as a lot of
the high-level code was written in our own, interpreted language
anyway it did not matter so much.

/Peter

[Wolfgang Draxinger]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

Sherman Pendley wrote:

"Lorenzo Villari" <vlllnz@alice.i twrites:
>

>I'm maybe wrong, but I was under the impression that for
>Firefox they use gtk+, which is written in C...

>
Gtk+ is indeed written in C, but it's object-oriented

And?!

Coding something in C doesn't mean you must abandon using OOP
methods. It just means, that things are going to be a bit more
verbose (i.e. you've to maintain everything yourself).

Wolfgang Draxinger
--
E-Mail address works, Jabber: hexarith@jabber .org, ICQ: 134682867

[David Kastrup]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

Wolfgang Draxinger <wdraxinger@dar kstargames.dewr ites:

Sherman Pendley wrote:
>

>"Lorenzo Villari" <vlllnz@alice.i twrites:
>>

>>I'm maybe wrong, but I was under the impression that for
>>Firefox they use gtk+, which is written in C...

>>
>Gtk+ is indeed written in C, but it's object-oriented

>
And?!
>
Coding something in C doesn't mean you must abandon using OOP
methods. It just means, that things are going to be a bit more
verbose (i.e. you've to maintain everything yourself).

Well, message passing, the fundamental defining characteristic of OOP (I
mean, this is what made Smalltalk revolutionary with regard to
programming techniques and gave it its name) requires you to switch
sustained execution contexts, basically switching to a different stack,
eveery object having its own control flow. Synchronous multithreading
or whatever you want to call it. That's what OO is actually about. The
in-memory and synchronous in-process equivalent to separate applications
with separate control flow talking to one another via pipes.

Of course, C++ does not have it either. When it laid claim to the
buzzphrase OO, its reference implementation Cfront could not map this
aspect to C, and so one implemented and declared a humongous wagonload
of other features to befuddle detractors and turn them away in disgust
before they noticed the missing essential detail.

The Cfront language design inheritage indeed means that for the most
part, you can't do anything in C++ that is not fundamentally accessible
in C.

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

[fnegroni]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

On Jul 20, 10:15 pm, Wolfgang Draxinger <wdraxin...@dar kstargames.de>
wrote:

Coding something in C doesn't mean you must abandon using OOP
methods. It just means, that things are going to be a bit more
verbose (i.e. you've to maintain everything yourself).

Sorry, but I fail to see how OOP applies to C.

I heard someone give me an example once, which was not OOP.

So I am curious to know what sort of OOP we are talking about here.

If I want to do OOP, I can use C++, Java, Eiffel, Python... certainly
not C.

Doing OOP in C is IMHO silly.

C is best at what it was designed to do, and that was not OOP.

I think a study of Yourdon and Structured Programming might be an
interesting read for those advocating OOP in C.

[lawrence.jones@siemens.com]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

Willem <willem@stack.n lwrote:

>
In other words: There cannot be any commercial applicaiton written in C,
because in your view it is not well suited to one or two application
types you can think of.

I don't think that's what James meant. I think when he said "commercial
application", he really meant "business data processing application". C
really *isn't* well suited to most BDP applications, so his statement is
much more reasonable when interpreted that way. But I still suspect
that there are at least a few BDP applications written in C nonetheless.
--
Larry Jones

Hello, local Navy recruitment office? Yes, this is an emergency... -- Calvin

[Willem]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

lawrence.jones@ siemens.com wrote:
) I don't think that's what James meant. I think when he said "commercial
) application", he really meant "business data processing application". C
) really *isn't* well suited to most BDP applications, so his statement is
) much more reasonable when interpreted that way. But I still suspect
) that there are at least a few BDP applications written in C nonetheless.

Just for the record:
I'm a software engineer for a company that does mortgages, and
we have plenty of C software in use that does data processing.


SaSW, Willem
--
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I'm not paranoid. You all think I'm paranoid, don't you !
#EOT

[Richard Heathfield]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

lawrence.jones@ siemens.com said:

Willem <willem@stack.n lwrote:

>>
>In other words: There cannot be any commercial applicaiton written in C,
>because in your view it is not well suited to one or two application
>types you can think of.

>
I don't think that's what James meant. I think when he said "commercial
application", he really meant "business data processing application". C
really *isn't* well suited to most BDP applications, so his statement is
much more reasonable when interpreted that way.

Whether you have interpreted him correctly is not for me to say, but what I
am in a position to say is that I've written plenty of "BDP" applications
in C, and I found it a very suitable language for the purpose. That is not
to say that there are no other such languages, of course, but it's one of
the better ones. I've used quite a few languages for "BDP", and I'd rank C
in the top two of those few. Whether I'd place it first or second is a
tough call. (C++ ranks a close third in my estimation.)

But I still suspect
that there are at least a few BDP applications written in C nonetheless.

Loads. Absolutely loads.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk >
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

[Wolfgang Draxinger]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

David Kastrup wrote:

Well, message passing, the fundamental defining characteristic
of OOP (I mean, this is what made Smalltalk revolutionary with
regard to programming techniques and gave it its name) requires
you to switch sustained execution contexts, basically switching
to a different stack, eveery object having its own control
flow. Synchronous multithreading or whatever you want to call
it. That's what OO is actually about. The in-memory and
synchronous in-process equivalent to separate applications with
separate control flow talking to one another via pipes.

The language I'm currently developing uses C as an intermediate.
And in this language message passing is one of the core
machanisms. And yes, of course message passing is possible, you
just may not implement it in form of simple function calling.

The runtime of my language implements a message dispatcher, that
delivers messages to each object on the reciever list. An object
can decide if it accepts the message and processes it, or if it
passes it on, or accepts and re-yields the message. For example
it is possible to send a message in a way, that it will be
passed up in the hierachy of object instances.

Wolfgang Draxinger
--
E-Mail address works, Jabber: hexarith@jabber .org, ICQ: 134682867

[Richard Harter]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

On Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:34:02 +0000, Richard Heathfield
<rjh@see.sig.in validwrote:

>lawrence.jones @siemens.com said:
>

>Willem <willem@stack.n lwrote:

>>>
>>In other words: There cannot be any commercial applicaiton written in C,
>>because in your view it is not well suited to one or two application
>>types you can think of.

>>
>I don't think that's what James meant. I think when he said "commercial
>application" , he really meant "business data processing application". C
>really *isn't* well suited to most BDP applications, so his statement is
>much more reasonable when interpreted that way.

>
>Whether you have interpreted him correctly is not for me to say, but what I
>am in a position to say is that I've written plenty of "BDP" applications
>in C, and I found it a very suitable language for the purpose. That is not
>to say that there are no other such languages, of course, but it's one of
>the better ones. I've used quite a few languages for "BDP", and I'd rank C
>in the top two of those few. Whether I'd place it first or second is a
>tough call. (C++ ranks a close third in my estimation.)

But, Richard, you place C first or second in all applications.
:-)

>

>But I still suspect
>that there are at least a few BDP applications written in C nonetheless.

>
>Loads. Absolutely loads.
>
>--
>Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk >
>Email: -http://www. +rjh@
>Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
>"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

Richard Harter, cri@tiac.net
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
Save the Earth now!!
It's the only planet with chocolate.

[s0suk3@gmail.com]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

On Jul 21, 3:53 am, fnegroni <f.e.negr...@go oglemail.comwro te:

On Jul 20, 10:15 pm, Wolfgang Draxinger <wdraxin...@dar kstargames.de>
wrote:
>

Coding something in C doesn't mean you must abandon using OOP
methods. It just means, that things are going to be a bit more
verbose (i.e. you've to maintain everything yourself).

>
Sorry, but I fail to see how OOP applies to C.
>
I heard someone give me an example once, which was not OOP.
>
So I am curious to know what sort of OOP we are talking about here.
>
If I want to do OOP, I can use C++, Java, Eiffel, Python... certainly
not C.
>
Doing OOP in C is IMHO silly.
>

Silly, ridiculous, painful... but frequently just necessary.

[Pete Becker]

Re: C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

On 2008-07-23 03:42:29 -0400, James Kanze <james.kanze@gm ail.comsaid:

On Jul 22, 7:21 pm, Ben Pfaff <b...@cs.stanfo rd.eduwrote:

>James Kanze <james.ka...@gm ail.comwrites:

>>C doesn't have any support for decimal arithmetic, nor any means
>>of adding it comfortably.

>

>http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/open/n4060.pdf

>
Yes, I'd heard about this. But I wasn't too sure of its status,
and it isn't implemented by the compilers I regularly use.
>

C and C++ both have TR's for decimal floating-point in the works. They
were paused, waiting for IEEE-754R, a revision to IEEE-754 that
includes decimal floating-point, to be completed. That happened a month
or so ago, and now both TR's are moving forward.

--
Pete
Roundhouse Consulting, Ltd. (www.versatilecoding.com) Author of "The
Standard C++ Library Extensions: a Tutorial and Reference
(www.petebecker.com/tr1book)