Re: OT: C++, yuck!

[Greg A. Woods]

[ On Wednesday, February 27, 2002 at 06:53:07 (-0800), Noel Yap wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: OT:  C++, yuck!
>
> There's also long-term costs to consider (eg supply
> and demand for maintainers).  It's extremely risky to
> use a language that's not as popular, but
> technologically more suited.

I don't buy that for a minute.  "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM"
Well they have, actually.

If I'm not mistaken there have even been successful (in my opinion)
studies showing that you can retrain programmers to use a more
appropriate language for less cost than it takes to maintain a harem of
sufficiently advanced C++ programmers.  But then what do I know about
project management, right?  ;-)

It's only "risky" if your business ignores costs and simply goes for
popularity and politics.

Maybe this will change if you're right about more people learning C++ to
a sufficient level, but I doubt you're right -- the more people writing
C++, the worse I see their code getting.  I.e. we're only getting more
bad programmers as more people try unsuccessfully to learn C++.  Didn't
you agree with me that there's likely only one person on the earth who
really knows C++ well enough?  :-)

Why you can probably even train people to use APL more easily than you
can train high-level expert C++ programmers!

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

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