Yeah, I remember being quite surprised when I first saw an exchange in which Linus Torvalds was involved. Though I wasn't very well versed in Linux those days, I had quite a lot of respect for the project, and the people involved. Torvalds was basically a symbol of all the effort that has gone into creating Linux, and my attitude towards him was really quite positive.

And then I saw what was supposed to be a sane discussion about some aspect of programming or the other. Everyone kept their cool, which is to be expected from developers I guess. Linus Torvalds was like a rabid dog.

I understand having strong feelings about one programming paradigm or another. I even understand why he would have enough self-esteem to fill a Zeppelin - whether I like him or not, he earned it. But for the love of god, you have to have some dignity. Noblesse oblige, one could say.

Especially if you are considered an authority, you shouldn't burst into flames every time someone disagrees with you. High self-esteem should be the exact reason to shut up and let people discuss among themselves. And if you do have something to say (and you know it will be remembered because of your position), make it something insightful and well-founded. Crushing some poor clueless guy doesn't cut it, I'm afraid.

While I still have respect for Linux, I no longer think Linus has that much to do with what Linux is. I know now that being the "founder" of Linux mostly meant providing some basic blocks making up the OS. Even in the early days, most of the work was done by other people, and many many things were borrowed from GNU in order to make it fully functional. He just started the right project at the right time.

EDIT: Oh, and:
http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/593132

Sure but I am and I'm part of "you all" so "us all" are better then Linus by association with me.

C++ is trash? Augghhh every time I try to learn a language it turns out it isn't what I am looking for. Visual Basic was really easy, but...not for games. Never learned C, just got C++. Why does the world hate me so!

Yeah, but I don't know which one is right for me. I guess I can stick on through C++ for a while, but spending my slowly earned money on books and my sparse time on learning it is kind of painful.

What parts of various languages are the same? Variables are, what about references, pointers, etc etc. Another reason I like C++ is because my mom did VB for her job, I have VS 2005 that I got for free. It is a pretty (visually) compiler (or whatever).

About pointers...say you have int val = 5; then you have int *pval in function my_func. Inside my_func, could you call a function my_func2(int pval2) and just pass pval? That would pass the address, correct? Then you could just use *pval2 inside my_func2 to get at val?

VS 2005 should include VB.net, C#, and maybe even J# (some Java clone).

And you can download the Express version, which should work in most cases for most people, for free. Speaking of that, I have to find the copy of VS2005 I got from MS for free so I can install it, the .NET compact framework doesn't like VS Express for some reason.

As far as sending in to my_func2, you would have my_func2(int *pval2), then you can send the pointer in, and access it using *pval2.

C++ is my favorite programming languages, but it sucks big time. It's the truth, we C++ programmers have to admit it.

Why does it suck?

Is it because it has lots of features? well, perhaps. It has a lot of corner cases, but quite a lot of people have managed to create multi-million line programs with it.

Is it because it has a strange syntax? it does. C++ tried to be like C. C is a simple language and its features bond well with its syntax. But not so with C++. But that is not a decisive factor. Just like any other language, after a while a typical programmer gets used to C++ syntax. It grows on you.

Is it because many things are left undefined by the standard? well, they are. There is no ABI, different compiler vendors implement things differently, etc. But that's not very important either. With a little help from the preprocessor, cross-compiler code can easily be written.

So what is it?

Is it because the standard library does not contain many useful abstractions?

Yeah, I dare say that that's the problem. Modern applications need a lot of functionality that C++ does not have:

1) threads
2) networking
3) gui
4) memory management
5) database support
6) xml support
7) unicode & internationalization
8) 3d graphics
9) parser
10) regular expressions
11) cryptography
12) file management
13) process management
14) registry management
15) a callback mechanism
16) plugin system
17) properties
18) reflection

And probably many more that I have forgotten about.

Any language without the above functionality would suck, to be honest. A language without an extensive SDK is useless.

But there is hope for C++ programmers after all.

At the risk of sounding like advertising a program (well, I do, but only because the product I am going to mention is so superior than anything else), there is product which covers most of the above! It is:

The Qt Toolkit

Using Qt, C++ is transformed from a language that sucks to a modern powerful language which combines best practices from most programming domains.

Programming C++ with Qt is a pleasure. Applications can be completed in a fraction of time of other solutions. The API is one of the most consistent and logically laid out APIs one could ever hope for.

Qt really shows the power of C++. I think that the C++ standards committee oughts to adopt Qt as the C++ standard library!

:-)

axilmar: There are libraries that do all of those things, and it's easy enough to abstract them all so you can switch libraries if you want. Things like callbacks are even trivial enough to write yourself.

Not saying Qt isn't nice (I've never used it), but there are alternatives, after all. C++ is versatile enough to be high-level and low-level at the same time, and I think that's where the problem lies. It gives the programmer the bricks, but also the wall. Libraries tend to give you the whole house.

On a side-note, whoever it was that was debating singletons with me in a thread a while back (I think it was Bruce Perry)... You were right.

They worked out fine for a while, but eventually I stretched it farther than the pattern allows for, and pretty soon I was trying to do some crazy ass-backwards stuff just to make it work and still keep the singleton-ness.

Just not worth it. And for what? What exactly did having those things singleton'd afford me? (except awkward syntax)

So do regular C and C++

Only thing is you'll have to do a bit more work to start using it. E.g open a window and load extensions.

I haven't yet tried but I don't think it is that simple to use other libraries together with QT

Let me rephrase that:

You're joking, right?

You don't have to do that extra platform-specific work with Qt.

Library interoperability is a hot topic for most, if not all, languages. I haven't met a programming language where libraries can peacefully co-exist without extra work.

Very true. I assume you are using the command line to compile your programs? Visual Studio has spoiled me (the process is automatic in VS).

So, modern applications don't need 3d graphics?

My point is that a language is as useful as its libraries. The fact that a language has nice or ugly syntax or does not have lambda functions are not that significant.

What if you want to extend your email application to display a graph (node and edges) of the email traffic (a social network basically)? Then you'd need a graph drawing lib (or roll your own) and using hardware 3d to display it will give better performance for large graphs.

Maybe that examples a little far fetched; or maybe that's the type of feature that could make an email app stand out from the crowd (ie market success). Anyway, we're picking at inconsequential bits here.

The point is that well integrated libraries and library support in general expand what developers can conceive of doing with a language. The language/framework/ide are becoming the golden mean which is what I believe axilmar was getting at.

Exactly.

Regarding 3d, for example, there are many visualization possibilities opened up. Game tools certainly need that kind of functionality. For example, in a tile map editor, one would be able to show several layers of tiles in 60 fps using the 3d hardware inside the application window.