Re: Why C++ is vastly superior to C

Michael Doubez <michael.doubez@free.fr> writes:


  ?Late? means to me: the decision which function body to call
  is made depending on the run-time type of the participating
  objects. (I guess, I would also have to require multimethods,
  then. But multimethod lookup also has its drawbacks [complexity].)

  Run-time polymorphism is possible in C++ (at least for one
  object in an expression), but the C++ standard library is
  based on templates. (I have not yet studied whether this
  makes OOP harder in C++.)

  In a real OOP language, like Smalltalk, blocks of statements
  are also objects. This means, for example, one can define an
  if method (in Smalltalk) as a method taking a boolean and a
  block (of statements), then passing the block to the
  boolean, where boolean objects of the class True execute
  their blocks, while those of the class False do not. This
  requires late binding, because the class of (x<y) is only
  known as late as at run time (it might be the subclass True
  of the class Boolean or the subclass False).

  In C++, ?if? is not a method at all, but a keyword
  hard-coded in the programming language. (Possibly, in
  Smalltalk, if also is hard-coded. But it could be defined as
  described in the preceding paragraph.)

  But maybe C++0x is getting closer to Smalltalk and LISP with
  its new closure objects!


  No, but since C++ is very complex, there must be some reason
  to use in instead of languages more simple and secure, so
  performance is a good candidate.