Re: C coding

[Scott Klement <c400-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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++.