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Subject: Re: Any reason to use C?

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 16:12:56 07/28/03

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On July 28, 2003 at 17:34:46, Russell Reagan wrote:

>Is there any reason to start new projects with C anymore? It seems like most (if
>not all) of the drawbacks of C++ have faded away with modern compilers.
>
>Note that I am talking about new projects, and maintaining old projects is
>obviously a good reason to still use C.

If i would learn coding today i would prefer C++.

However let's be clear, for good programmers there is not much diff between C
and C++. Every complex problem which you can solve in 10000 lines of C++ you can
solve in 10000 lines C too.

No big deal.

Only some 50 line examples C++ looks more powerful.

However for large projects there C++ is really a major advantage. If one
programmer messes up his object then for large projects the type checking and
array checking is way easier.

Of course the extra features in c++ means theoretical that there is more chances
to mess up and to create hidden bugs which are real hard to find, more than in
C.

In that sense C and C++ are the same.

I wrote a big athletics time tracking program in C++ when i was 17 years old. it
was finished when i was 18 and they didn't need it by then as they had already
some better commercial solution then (the athletics club).

However when i was 15,16,17 i had written a big chess interface, which when i
was 20 would be using for DIEP. For those days the interface was great.

VGA support even.

By modulair setting up the engine i ensured that at university i could run the
engine without graphical interface.

Note that under dos i had no option but to INTEGRATE the interface and the
engine. So i have a diepasci.c, my dos text interface i/o which is even till
todate existing, which is just:
  19-07-2003  19:56               21.884 diepasci.c

And i had a 140KB diepmenu.c which was the graphical DOS interface which i could
exchange for diepasci.c

Both having the 100% same functionality.

Great work at the time when DOS didn't know the word multithreading or
multiprocessing yet.

So there really isn't a difference for a one mans product at all if you are good
in dividing and conquering.

However for large projects i really see the advantages of C++.

Reality will be however that even the best set up c++ projects will suffer from
the same bugs a C project would. Yet it is at least a bit more clear now who to
blame for bugs B.

In a one mans product that is not the case.

So as most of us won't be writing one mans products only, C++ is trivially
better to use.





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