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- Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.c++
- Path: in1.uu.net!allegra!alice!bs
- From: bs@research.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup <9758-26353> 0112760)
- Subject: Re: Why garbage collection?
- Message-ID: <DLywCI.LDG@research.att.com>
- Organization: Info. Sci. Div., AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ
- References: <4ecmfo$as9@news2.ios.com> <4ei4og$la1@info.epfl.ch> <s08wx6akhlt.fsf@lox.ICSI.Berkeley.EDU>
- Date: Tue, 30 Jan 1996 00:07:29 GMT
-
-
- marcoxa@lox.icsi.berkeley.edu (Marco Antoniotti) write.
-
- > [discussion about C++ by someone else]
- >
- > This is probably off-track, but, as a diversion, please bear this last
- > gripe of mine on the language which is going to be swapped away by
- > Java (no, it is not Lisp :) ).
-
- You are indeed way off track, and I think the announcements of C++'s
- imminent demise are rather premature.
-
- > One of the things that bothered me most with C++, was this sort of
- > "newspeak" which it introduced. For years people had been working in
- > Flavors, Clos, Smalltalk etc, and they pretty much shared a common
- > terminology. Then suddendly, we did not have "methods" any more, we
- > had "member functions", we lost the "inheritance" (pun intended) and
- > started "deriving classes".
-
- I think you have your dates wrong. The C++ terminology was picked in
- 1979. Then, the work on CLOS hadn't yet started, Smalltalk-80 hadn't
- been completed, and its predecessor was not well known outside a small
- circle of researchers. I don't recall the dates for Flavors and Loops,
- but again these languages were not known outside the AI community for
- quite a few years.
-
- The C++ terminology is based on that of Simula (1967) and partly on that
- of C (1972). The base- and derived class terminology was indeed invented
- for C++ - based on rather negative experience teaching using the Simula
- super- and subclass terminology.
-
- A good source for dates and other historical facts about these languages is:
-
- Preprint of Proc. ACM History of Programming Languages
- Conference (HOPL-2).
- April 1993.
- ACM SIGPLAN Notices, March 1993.
-
- The C++ paper there is
-
- Stroustrup: The History of C++: 1979-1991.
-
- A more thorough description of the design of C++ is:
-
- Stroustrup: The Design and Evolution of C++.
- Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-54330-3.
-
- > Of course, the argument is that C++ wanted to "clarify" such things
- > and the choice of new terminology was a "good thing".
-
- You got the motivation wrong as well. There wasn't an accepted terminology
- to "clarify." I stuck to the most widely used terminology at the time
- (Simula's) as far as I could, and introduced new terms that fitted that
- and the terminology of C only where I saw no alternative.
-
- > Well, I must say that I am very pleased to see that Java somewhat
- > reintroduced the "old" terminology and that Lisp, (as well as Dylan)
- > is not yet dead.
- >
- > Half seriously yours
-
- It is a good idea to be at least half accurate even if only half serious.
-
- - Bjarne
-
-
-