Re: [OT] Re: C++ *for Git*

["Marco Costalba" <mcostalba@gmail.com>]

On 9/23/07, Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org> wrote:
> >
> > Object oriented languages creates black boxes: that's the reason why
> > object oriented exsists and also the reason why Linus hates it ;-)
>
>   This is just nonsense. This has been proved, though I can't find the
> paper about this anymore, than modules (or packages whichever name you
> give them) plus abstract types are as good as OO languages at creating
> black boxes. I mean it has been proved that it gives the exact same
> amount of expressiveness. So please stop with this myth. And don't speak
> for people, I would be very surprised that Linus would dislike "black
> boxes". Abstractions are good, when used wisely, and I would be much
> surprised to see Linus pretend otherwise.
>

>From a Linus recent thread:

> - inefficient abstracted programming models where two years down the road
>  you notice that some abstraction wasn't very efficient, but now all
>   your code depends on all the nice object models around it, and you
>   cannot fix it without rewriting your app.
>
>In other words, the only way to do good, efficient, and system-level and
>portable C++ ends up to limit yourself to all the things that are
>basically available in C. And limiting your project to C means that people
>don't screw that up, and also means that you get a lot of programmers that
>do actually understand low-level issues and don't screw things up with any
>idiotic "object model" crap.

Perhaps I have misunderstood, but the idea I got is that for Linus OO
brings in more problems than what it tries to fix.


>   The real problem with big applications, is not that they are written
> with C, C++, D, APL or Perl, but that they are big.

I have said exactly this, I don't understand where's your point in
repeating the same concept.

> C has many many quirks, I don't discuss that, but OO programming
> solves none of them, and the problems OO addresses are not the one that
> may interfere in the git development.

I really don't get how you made up your mind I'm advocating OO ? The
only comment I made on OO until now was to highlight one of its
downsides.


> I mean, the two really interesting
> things in OO (that haven't a tremendous cost in return) are member
> overloading and inheritance.

You have listed two things that are a world apart one from each other.

member overload is just syntactic sugar for name mangling, while
inheritance and the _strictly_ related virtual member functions (AKA
polymorphism) is what opens the gates to all the stuff you have deeply
blamed in your post.

>I see very few places where git would
> benefit from that

Instead I see none. But probably you have looked at git code better then me.


>   Can we go back to git now ?
>

You are not forced to follow this thread if this bores you.

Thanks
Marco