Re: Becoming a "Super User" (was Re: Teach files to AppleWorks Gs)

[sheldon@atlcom.net (Sheldon Simms)]

In article <58acev$a3s@scapa.cs.ualberta.ca>, glyn@cs.ualberta.ca (Devin
Reade) wrote:

> >All this makes me think of two things I think it would be nice to have
> >for the IIgs, but I'm not holding my breath on either of them:
> >1) A C++ compiler.
>  
> Having recently looked at C++ related problems from a compiler writer's
> perspective, not only do I not believe we will ever have C++ for the IIgs,
> I don't think I would recommend it either.  There are various problems,
> but they are in one way or another related to bloat code (memory
> requirements, stack, excessive runtime indirection, etc).  Further, I've
> found that even an 8 CPU Power-PC 601 box with 1.5 Gb of RAM is sluggish
> when doing C++ compilations of any decent size.

note: followups set to comp.sys.apple2.programmer

Well I think that perhaps a well-chosen subset of standard C++ would be
nice to have. The main ineffiency that older C++ incurs over C is a table
lookup and an function call through a pointer when using virtual functions.
apart from the virtual function tables, I'm not aware of any extra memory
requirements for C++ over C in the heap or on the stack, assuming you're
not including language features that require runtime support.

-Sheldon

-- 
W. Sheldon Simms III - sheldon@atlcom.net