Warp wrote:
>   I understand that "bashing" can also be used to describe overly negative
> critique of something in a way that, while not telling any lies per se,
> makes it sound a lot worse than it really is. 

Fair enough. I thought we'd already talked to death the advantages of unsafe 
languages (primarily performance and control).

> Especially if the impact of
> many of these negative things is exaggerated, 

I think you underestimate how much of a problem some problems are for 
average programmers because you've become expert.  I still occasionally get 
questions from people who have been programming for decades who ask
   "How do I debug something when it stops crashing after I add a printf()?"

You yourself have posted C++ code with a quiz-like "what's wrong with this 
class".  Clearly it takes a fair amount of expertise to write correct C++ 
code, doesn't it?

I can write C code that doesn't have bugs due to the unsafeness, but it 
takes me much longer because I have to think a lot harder about the 
boundaries. It's also something that took years of experience to learn.

I also figured it wouldn't be taken to be "bashing C++" if I pointed out the 
equivalent flaws in the whole list of other languages we were talking about, 
which is what led me to believe you might be a bit oversensitive or 
oversensitized.

>   For example, in my "I hate Java" page I'm outright bashing Java because
> I'm pointing everything that I consider negative about it, without pointing
> out anything positive to compensate (although Java does have its positive
> things as well). Someone who didn't know anything about Java could get a
> rather biased impression of the language by reading that page alone. (Guess
> twice if I care. ;) )

There's nothing wrong IMO with a good bash so labeled. I don't think 
anyone's going to read a page labeled "I hate Java" and expect a balanced 
presentation, any more than they're going to go to apple.com to see the pros 
vs cons of apples vs windows, say. I even think something like the C++ FQA 
is a valuable service, bashing as it is. I wish there were pages like that 
for every language and tool.

I don't think it's a bash of any one language to say "no language strictly 
enforces modularity, they're all broken in various ways, and here they are: 
...."  I'm hoping it's not considered bashing Y to say "I like X better than 
Y because ..."  It's not like I started talking about the flaws I think are 
in the design of C++ that haven't anything to do with violating modularity, 
or that I argued you can't violate modularity in the other languages.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   My fortune cookie said, "You will soon be
   unable to read this, even at arm's length."

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