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From: veit@fanoe.gmd.de (Holger Veit)
Subject: Re: Release of drivers etc.
Message-ID: <1993Mar4.095753.18290@gmd.de>
Sender: veit@fanoe (Holger Veit)
Nntp-Posting-Host: fanoe
Organization: GMD - German National Research Center for Computer Science
References: <18685@umd5.umd.edu> <1993Feb26.084810.15566@gmd.de> <RICH.93Feb26094352@omicron.Rice.edu> <C3Bzup.CC7@jshark.inet-uk.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 1993 09:57:53 GMT
Lines: 80
In article <C3Bzup.CC7@jshark.inet-uk.co.uk>, joe@jshark.inet-uk.co.uk
(Joe Sharkey) writes:
|> In article <RICH.93Feb26094352@omicron.Rice.edu> Rich@Rice.edu
|> writes:
|> >In article <1993Feb26.084810.15566@gmd.de> veit@fanoe.gmd.de
|> (Holger Veit) writes:
|> > |> 3. add a C++ calling convention.
|> > This is acceptable. To clarify: I am aiming at the calling
|> interface which is
|> > already "object-oriented", though in C. I do not want to
|> convert all the driver code
|> > into C++, just because it is a nice language. You can write
|> quite nice C++ code
|> >
|> >Another motivation for using C++ is strong typing and all the
|> compile
|> >time checking that goes with it. Rich
|>
|> Heretical thought:
|>
|> Let's do this properly, and re-write the whole mess in Ada ;)
|>
|> Oh, all right: Modula-3.
I take your argument, although the first part of it had a smily, as a
serious
comment. Your argument is aiming at the extreme overhead these
languages
appear to have, and the strong typing which was remarked by Rich as
an
advantage.
The first point is: Noone said that the whole object-oriented stuff
like
a Smalltalk-compatible object system which parts blow up the
executables, should
be put into the kernel as well. The "streams" classes look nice for
object-oriented purists, but the kernel should be stable and
consistent, not
primarily have a nice outlook. To understand where strong typing might
make sense,
just add the -Wall gcc-option to the Makefile.i386 and recompile the
kernel.
Much of the code does luckily work because
sizeof(pointer)==sizeof(int), but
there are still many parts in the code that I wouldn't trust if these
were
real hardware parts in the motor of my car.
Unfortunately, CS courses on C++ do not focus on efficient
programming, which is
necessary - and possible! - here.
Ada and Modula-3, the latter in particular, draw this "declarationism"
to
an extreme, and require real converter functions in places where a C
or
C++ compiler is happy with a cast and does the necessary things
automatically.
Furthermore, C++ is, with some minor differences, downward compatible
to
C, so talking about rewriting anything is not a debate.
|> Joe Sharkey joe@jshark.inet-uk.co.uk
|> ...!uunet!ibmpcug!jshark!joe
Holger
--
Dr. Holger Veit | INTERNET:
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