Of Bounties and Mercenaries

[Stephan T. Lavavej]

[Scott Robert Ladd]
> C is an excellent language -- despite being Standardized
> (twice!) by committees

Despite, heh.

> it remains a clean and succint way of expressing algorithms.

I don't really think so; not when the algorithms involve any sort of data
structures (which means basically most algorithms).

> Yes, C++ has many nice object-oriented features -- and those
> features are often misused, obscuring the underlying logic of
> a program.

I didn't suggest using Crummy, Common C++, where inheritance is overused and
bozos abound.

> It is very easy to be seduced by the power of higher-level
> abstractions, only to lose the efficiency and clarity of
> expression required for elegant programming.

Recently I was discussing with some friends how to implement Huffman
compression.  When a Huffman tree is being constructed, "available" nodes
are kept in a pile, and nodes with the lowest weight must be repeatedly
removed, while new nodes are inserted.

After a bit of thinking, we arrived at this:

std::priority_queue<Node *, std::vector<Node *>, boost::function<bool (Node
*, Node *)> >
available_nodes(*_1 > *_2);

Now, that's certainly... subtle, but it simplifies greatly the following
code.

And you don't ever have to use GC if you use RAII.

Stephan T. Lavavej
http://nuwen.net