Re: Bob's 'Self-aggrandizing ignorant' Count: Was: What databases have taught me

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> Bob Badour a écrit :

Google is not a substitute for thinking. There is more to learning than the Internet. Wikipedia is an not education. Information is not knowledge.

> > as a variant of C for exactly the same purpose:
> > simulation.
>
> "The specific tasks that caused me to start designing and
> implementing C++ (initially called "C with Classes") had
> to do with distributing operating system facilities across
> a network."

Do you understand Stroustrup's background was /simulating/ distributed operating systems not /implementing/ them? And hence "had to do with" there almost surely refers to said research /simulations/. Find a copy of "The Design and Evolution of C++" and start reading. It is a great book anyhow. Here is a relevant quote:

"What is relevant, though, was the focus on composing software out of well-delimited modules and that the main experimental tool was a relatively large and detailed SIMULATOR I wrote for SIMULATING software running on a distributed system."

> > and in fact borrowed the features from Simula.
>
> "Standard C++ and the design and programming styles it
> supports owe a debt to the functional languages,
> especially to ML"

D&E is replete with references regarding the influence of Simula. Examples:

(The first sentence of the first chapter.)

"The prehistory of C++ - the couple of years before the idea of adding Simula-like features to C occurred to me ..."

"It was a pleasure to write that SIMULATOR. The features of Simula were almost ideal for the purpose ..."

"During the writing and initial debugging, I acquired a great respect for the expressiveness of Simula's type system ... In contrast, I had found Pascal's type system to be worse than useless ... The contrast I perceived between the rigidity of Pascal and the flexibility of Simula was ESSENTIAL for the development of C++. Simula's class concept was seen as the key difference ..."

And it goes on and on and on.

> > The whole purpose of a simulation is to create a large
> > unpredictable state machine
>
> Possibly. But simulation was not the purpose of Smalltalk
> (first language labelled as "object-oriented") nor AFAICT
> of C++

Well it was certainly /an/ original purpose. Though the design goals seem to have /evolved/ to encompass more general purposes. However, given that, as Stroustrup said, his experience with /simulation/ was core it can be argued that regardless of his goals, he created a language that is designed around simulation (at least the class portion). And certainly Bob's original and weaker claim that such features are /useful/ for simulation is well supported. (Note George is unable to comprehend words like /an/ and /useful/. He ignores them and sees /the/ and /defines/ instead. Hopefully you do not have the same problem.)

• Keith -- Fraud 6