problems/risks due to programming language

[Dan Mick]

In article <TOMBRE.90Mar1013132 at weissenburger.crin.fr| tombre at crin.fr (Karl Tombre) writes:
|In article <259 at eiffel.UUCP| bertrand at eiffel.UUCP (Bertrand Meyer) writes:
|   From <Ec.3251 at cs.psu.edu| by melling at cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger):
|
|   | Personally, it's the little things like this that make me
|   | believe that everyone should ABANDON C and move on to C++(two others being
|   | function prototyping and strong type checking).  Waddya think?  Wither C?
|
|       How can the words ``strong type checking'' be applied to a language
|   in which any variable may be cast to any type? In which you declare the
|   type of a generic list element to be ``pointer to characters''?
|
|       C++ only magnifies the problems of C, and it does not even have the
|   excuses that can be invoked in the case of a 20-year old design such as C.
|   [and so on]
|
|Am I the only one having regularly the following problem?

No.

|I think Eiffel is a very good language (probably one of the best), I
|am quite impressed by its design. I also appreciate Bertrand Meyer's
|various technical and scientifical contributions in conferences and
|newsgroups. But from time to time, this attitude of his comes up and
|annoys me VERY MUCH : he seems to have difficulties accepting that
|there are other solutions for object-oriented programming, that other
|languages exist and are popular for various reasons. He especially
|tends to become "rabid" when speaking of C++. This leaves such a bad
|"taste in my mouth" that it tends to give me unjustly biased views of
|Mr. Meyer's product, i.e. Eiffel.

I know nothing *at all* about Eiffel, and I'm much less encouraged to learn
about it based on Bertrand's comments.  It's not that I'm less interested
in it technically; it's just that, due to his attitude toward communication in
general, I'm less apt to believe anything he's done technically is useful.

|That any "neutral" user gives his opinion about the merits or
|deficiencies of C++, Eiffel, Smalltalk, Cobol, BASIC or whatever is
|just fine. But shouldn't it be plain decency to restrain from
|commenting in such strong and passionnate terms about one's
|concurrents' products ? Especially for somebody wishing not to be
|a marketing person but to be known as an authority in OO languages and
|design ? I remember for instance reading some time ago, in the news,
|comments from either Brad Cox or Bjarne Stroustrup about the other's
|language; at no time did it have such a bad taste than the referenced
|article. Isn't it on the border of arrogance to believe that "I know
|the definite, final and only TRUTH about how an object-oriented
|language should be designed" ???

Yes.   Yes, it should. 



Unfortunately, the world is run by sales slime.  Good luck telling the
difference.