Re: [Plib-devel] C++ Philosophy Question

[Bill W. <bil...@ch...>]

Well, I started this thread because I wanted to know what to stick to in coding for plib, and I appreciate the info.  I do have a few parting shots^H^H^H^H^Hthoughts on this, however.

(I've kind of mixed up Dave's and Steve's replies, sorry).

>> STL would just be another dependency
>> If you just need a list you can make it yourself
>> like the ssgVertexArray

Reinventing  (or reimplementing) the wheel?-

>
>So far, nothing in STL seems worth the hassle. There are
>still too many incompatible versions floating around out
>there - and systems that don't have it installed, etc.
>
>I watched the L-O-N-G thread that went on in the FGFS
>mailing list when STL was first used.  It convinced me
>that I can do without it.
>

There _are_ problems with STL across implementations (even using Visual C++ 6.0, you'd better be using Service Pack 3).  This is unfortunate, because you can write a lot of nice, concise code quickly using the STL containers.  I've come to like STL, but I agree that portability is a problem (which I sort of realized as soon as I posted the question).  Oh well...

>
>> *** templates, exceptions, references, operator overloading
>
>Well, some of these things are just eye candy. (eg Operator
>overloading) - some obfuscate code to a dangerous degree (eg
>References) - others are STILL not portable enough for my
>liking (Templates, exceptions).

I agree about exceptions (but preferable to unceremonious exits ;), templates can be OK if you stick to basics, references are more precise/less error prone than pointers when e.g. a function arg. or member cannot/should not be NULL (and cannot/should not be changed dynamically), and I think there are cases where not overloading operator = (or at least hiding it) for a class can cause trouble. 

> 
>> *** namespaces
>> 
>> i like them. any thoughts?

I suspect namespaces are (at least currently) a bit too subtle; I recall seeing some hair-raising examples of their potential for misuse in CUJ/C++ Report (one of those).  I'll try to dig them up if anyone's interested.

Anyway, that's it for religion, time to write some code.

Bill