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Linus Torvalds on C++

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Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#61

Post by petercooper »

georgieporgie wrote: post #42

sigh not this flamewar repost again. The fact that he leads with "language X sucks because it attracts type Y programmers" is quite possibly the worst, cheapest, and lowest attack I've ever seen in technology. It's sad that a technical hero like Linus would basically behave like such a tantrum-throwing child. It reflects poorly on the whole tech community.

The fact that he leads with "language X sucks because it attracts type Y programmers" is quite possibly the worst, cheapest, and lowest attack I've ever seen in technology.

We see a similar point being made against Rubyists and Rails developers on HN quite often, alas. And, worse, in the "I'd learn Ruby but it seemed like there was too much drama" crowd.

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#62

Post by burgerbrain »

nxn wrote: post #6
stephen_g wrote: post #5

Has anyone really not seen this in the last two years? Anyway, Linus may be a very experienced C programmer, but that doesn't mean his opinion on C++ carries much weight... I'd be more interested on what someone who actually has a lot of experience in using C++ says. Especially with modern C++ and recent tools, libraries etc, which are very different from what was around five or ten years ago. I suppose it is nice fo…

Haven't seen it. I've seen many other examples of Torvalds being an ass, but I don't bother to keep track really. It does make me wonder though how he's able to get away with responses like that, when most other "founders" (not sure what the proper term here really is) would have the majority of their users/supporters just go elsewhere. EDIT: ... Let alone have supporters who get defensive enough to start downvoting…

"It does make me wonder though how he's able to get away with responses like that"

The man delivers.

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#63

Post by [deleted] »

joezydeco wrote: post #21
balloot wrote: post #11

This feels like it was written by a guy who wrote a popular OS and has had people kissing his ass for 15 years. Basically the coding version of a diva musician.

How many distributed version control systems have you worked on and released to the public? Any worth critiquing?

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#64

Post by yzhou »

I guess what he meant was signal to noise ratio, i mean, Aplayer/Cplayer ratio. Too many Cplayer programmer start learning c++ without any idea how cpu and memory works, if you let them to mess with the kernels it would be a nightmare for Linus.

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#65

Post by burgerbrain »

trustfundbaby wrote: post #38
bronson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint: someone saying that you should rewrite your project in his own favorite language is NOT someone that you should allow to help or contribute.

Doesn't mean he should insult them ... at some point in a person's life, they should be above that, but that's just my opinion.

Live is too short to justify not having a little chuckle at the expense of your detractors.

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#66

Post by aidenn0 »

nxn wrote: post #6
stephen_g wrote: post #5

Has anyone really not seen this in the last two years? Anyway, Linus may be a very experienced C programmer, but that doesn't mean his opinion on C++ carries much weight... I'd be more interested on what someone who actually has a lot of experience in using C++ says. Especially with modern C++ and recent tools, libraries etc, which are very different from what was around five or ten years ago. I suppose it is nice fo…

Haven't seen it. I've seen many other examples of Torvalds being an ass, but I don't bother to keep track really. It does make me wonder though how he's able to get away with responses like that, when most other "founders" (not sure what the proper term here really is) would have the majority of their users/supporters just go elsewhere. EDIT: ... Let alone have supporters who get defensive enough to start downvoting…

I haven't worked closely with Torvalds, but I have worked with other OSS project leads that have such asshole responses roughly proportional to the popularity of the project, and have a theory on it.

I don't know if it's intentional or not but many OSS project leads respond like this to questions that come up a lot but don't merit a response. How many times do you think Torvalds has had to field "questions" of the form "C is crap, you should use C++, it's like C only better!"

To a certain extent it is garbage in, garbage out, if you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer.

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#67

Post by blibble »

[deleted] wrote: post #63
joezydeco wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many distributed version control systems have you worked on and released to the public? Any worth critiquing?

[deleted]

Linux and Git exist fine without C++.

C++ is many, many orders of magnitude more complex than Java, as Java was designed to be a C style object orientated language done correctly (i.e. with the foot shooting elements removed...)

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#68

Post by akent »

[deleted] wrote: post #63
joezydeco wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many distributed version control systems have you worked on and released to the public? Any worth critiquing?

[deleted]

>>> Because things like C++ is what enables things like Git and Linux to be written.

Are you referring to something in particular? In what way does C++ "enable" git and/or Linux?

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#69

Post by MBlume »

nxn wrote: post #6
stephen_g wrote: post #5

Has anyone really not seen this in the last two years? Anyway, Linus may be a very experienced C programmer, but that doesn't mean his opinion on C++ carries much weight... I'd be more interested on what someone who actually has a lot of experience in using C++ says. Especially with modern C++ and recent tools, libraries etc, which are very different from what was around five or ten years ago. I suppose it is nice fo…

Haven't seen it. I've seen many other examples of Torvalds being an ass, but I don't bother to keep track really. It does make me wonder though how he's able to get away with responses like that, when most other "founders" (not sure what the proper term here really is) would have the majority of their users/supporters just go elsewhere. EDIT: ... Let alone have supporters who get defensive enough to start downvoting…

"When I first looked at Git source code two things struck me as odd: 1. Pure C as opposed to C++. No idea why. Please don't talk about portability, it's BS."

Come on. Dude was picking a fight, and he got it. Maybe there are other examples of Linus being an ass, but I don't see how this qualifies.

Re: Linus Torvalds on C++

#70

Post by yannickt »

nodemaker wrote: post #53

I wonder what Linus thinks about Objective C as another as an alternative approach to Object Orientation in C. IMO Objective C gets much farther in implementing polymorphism and dynamic binding than C++ can even dream of. Although I hear good things about Boost, I think thats like patching the language instead of fixing the fundamental flaws in its design.

"fundamental flaws in its design"

It would be pretty hard to fix them without breaking backward compatibility.

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