Re: C coding

Hmmm... I think up until, maybe 10 years ago, I would've agreed with this. C++ was not standardized at first, and the core classes available were very different on different platforms for a long time, making it hard to write portable code.

But, in 1998 they standardized C++, and by 2003 or 2004 (something like that) the standardized version was pretty much everywhere. So from that point on, C++ became a pretty good language for platform independence. Not as good as Java perhaps, but equal to C.

As for "elegant, simple"... well, I've been coding in C forever, so I'm quite used to it, but for new programmers in particular, the string handling in C is quite awkward and is very error-prone. My experience has been that a C programmer with less than 5 years of experience will almost certainly do something wrong with string/memory handling and overwrite some area of memory that they shouldn't, and this will often go unnoticed for a long time and will make it into production code. C++ however is much more elegant with regards to strings, and makes it much easier to get things right. So I can see where Jon is coming from, here.

I personally still prefer to code in C, but I think it's mostly because that's what I'm used to.

I would never recommend Java over C++. Java's environment with it's JVMs and application servers makes it so much more awkward, IMHO. I definitely prefer C or C++ to Java any day of the week. (This is just my opinion, though.)


On 2/13/2014 4:05 AM, John E wrote:

Compared to C++, C is quite elegant, simple, and not overly complex as C++.
And if you're building a big system (not some one-off utility or tool), and
therefore have a need for OOP, choose Java or something else.

And C is also very platform independent, meaning you can compile your C
source without issues (if the code is a bit disciplined) on any known
platform known to man. Not so for C++.