为什么C++

Why C++

 

刘未鹏(pongba)

C++的罗浮宫(http://blog.youkuaiyun.com/pongba)

 

非常感谢waterwalk翻译了整篇文章，我整理了之后单独贴了出来，见这里。

 

The Problem

So, why C++? Before you frown and turn away. Just try to answer this simple question.

 

Efficiency, right? Everybody knows the answer. But as it turned out, when discussing a programming language or everything related to one, one should be very specific. Now why’s that? Let me ask you another question: if efficiency is the only reason people use C++, then why don’t they just use C? C is admittedly more efficient than C++ (yeah, yeah, I know it has been proved that C isn’t to any significant extent more efficient than C++, so don’t get me wrong here, because even if they are equally efficient, the problem still exists).

 

The Myth

I know you are going to say “better abstraction mechanism”, because after all C++ is designed to be a better C, one that has uncompromised efficiency and yet at the same time has all those fancy high-level features. But then the problem comes down to “does it really matter if the developers need those fancy features?”  I mean, after all we all have been hearing voices about KISS and stuff, and we all have heard about the claim that, compared to C++, C is more KISS so we should use C. This unstoppable argument has turned the comparison between C and C++ into a big myth (or maybe a mess). And surprisingly, it seems that many people do incline to C, the reason mostly being that C++ is so hard to use right. Even Linus thinks so, too.

 

The real serious impact of this phenomenon is that it drives more people to C when they’re weighing their options, be them C and C++; and once they start using C, they will soon get satisfied and comfortable with what suffices, experiencing what is called “satisfaction”. This is when they will come out and claim that C actually is a better choice than C++ even though they didn’t actually try to use C++ or they aren’t adequately good C++ programmers at all. The real answer, however, almost always begins with “it depends”.

 

So, did I say “it depends”? On what? Obviously there’re some areas where C is a better choice than C++. For instance, device driver development is usually something that doesn’t need fancy OOP/GP techniques. It’s just simple data manipulation; what really matters is the programmers know exactly how the system works, and what they’re doing. Now what about OS development? I’m not a guy who’s been involved in any kind of OS development myself, but having read a fair amount of OS code (Unix mostly), I’ve come to feel that there’s a significant part of the OS development that doesn’t need OOP/GP either.