Re: back to .Net? lesser of two evils?
BGB wrote:
markspace wrote:
BGB wrote:
for example, someone could make an extended form of Java
which adds ifdef's...
I rest my case. :-)
but, ifdef is a useful and powerful feature...
Only useful for a non-portable language.
This does not establish that it would be useful for Java.
also, C# has ifdef, so it probably isn't all bad.
Lame reasoning.
How does presence in C# argue for or against the quality of a feature compared to its presence in Java? It would be equally valid to argue that "ifdef" is bad because Java omits it.
Do try to avoid invalid reasoning, hm?
granted, it may reflect a different development philosophy:
Again, not speaking to whether "ifdef" is a good or bad feature.
what motivates people to choose, say, Java, or C#, or C++, or C, or ...
may in turn be driven by different sets of views and development goals.
Still not speaking to whether "ifdef" is a good or bad feature.
so, Java tries to gain portability via homogeneity.
so, the same code works everywhere, because everywhere is the same.
And this is bad because ... ?
C and C++ via being flexible towards heterogeneity.
Which "flexibility" causes infamous difficulties.
each place is different, but things like typedefs/ifdefs/... can help
gloss over most of the differences.
For certain values of "help". "#ifdef" also horribly complicates C and C++ code and horribly damages readability. This is a good thing?
granted, it would be nice to have a consistent platform, such that one
doesn't really need piles of ifdef's everywhere, but this is not the
fault of the existence of ifdef's proper.
You have it backwards. "#ifdef" is a reaction to a fault, not a cause.
in a completely homogenous environment, most likely people would simply
not need them. however, if one doesn't have them, but are faced with a
heterogeneous platform (say, standard JVM vs Android), then one has a
mess...
Since "standard JVM" doesn't run on Android, and Dalvik doesn't run elsewhere, I fail to see the problem.
J2ME is even less compatible with "standard JVM", whatever the heck that is.
granted, apparently (from stuff encountered elsewhere online) some
people have been dealing with some of these issues by feeding Java code
through the C preprocessor (presumably just prior to feeding it to
javac), but I don't know how widespread this sort of practice is.
Hopefully not very.
or such...
What is that "or such..." about, anyway?
--
Lew