FW: never mind the objects...what's the point? (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 18 Feb 1998 18:37:17 -0500
From: Marcus Jackson <zwnpx@dhnqevf.pbz>
To: Jeff Pickering <wcvpx@dhnqevf.pbz>,
    'Dave Corlette' <pbeyrggr@uhnec.uneineq.rqh>,
    'Marc Jimenez' <zwvzrarm@yrsgonax.pbz>, Joe Maranda <wbr@dhnqevf.pbz>
Subject: FW: never mind the objects...what's the point?



> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Sprogis, Dave [FZGC:qfcebtvf@Engvbany.Pbz]
> Sent:	Wednesday, February 18, 1998 6:22 PM
> To:	Brad Sprogis (E-mail); Brian Dodds (E-mail); Charles Kasabula
> (E-mail); Colleen Kelly (E-mail); Dave Dickinson (E-mail); Larry
> Bigelow (E-mail); Lynn McCoy (E-mail); Pat Ludwig (E-mail); Peter
> Nurney (E-mail); Peter Previte (E-mail); Scott Conti (E-mail); Tom
> Wittbrodt (E-mail); Val Conti (E-mail); Aman Datta (E-mail); Judy
> Robinson (E-mail); Kristen Abrahamson (E-mail); Luscious Jackson
> (E-mail)
> Subject:	FW: never mind the objects...what's the point?
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	cyhqjvt@fvyirefgernz.pbz [FZGC:cyhqjvt@fvyirefgernz.pbz]
> Sent:	Wednesday, February 18, 1998 1:06 PM
> To:	'Dave Sprogis'; 'JohnSullivan'; 'StuFried'; 'LouBaby';
> 'AlanPreston'; 'BrianAtOracle'
> Subject:	never mind the objects...what's the point?
> 
> A joke?  I wonder...
> =================================================================== 
> 
> On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview to
> the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine. Naturally, the editors thought he
> would be giving a retrospective view of seven years of object-oriented
> design, using the language he created. By the end of the interview,
> the interviewer got more than he had bargained for and, subsequently,
> the editor decided to suppress its contents, 'for the good of the
> industry' but, as with many of these things, there was a leak. 
> Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and
> unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews. You may find
> it interesting...
> __________________________________________________________________ 
> 
> Interviewer:  Well, it's been a few years since you changed the world
> of software design, how does it feel, looking back? 
> Stroustrup:  Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before
> you arrived. Do you remember?  Everyone was writing 'C' and, the
> trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it.  Universities got
> pretty good at teaching it, too. They were turning out competent - I
> stress the word 'competent' - graduates at a phenomenal rate. That's
> what caused the problem. 
> Interviewer:  Problem? 
> Stroustrup:  Yes, problem. Remember when everyone wrote Cobol? 
> Interviewer:  Of course, I did too 
> Stroustrup:  Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods.
> Their salaries were high, and they were treated like royalty. 
> Interviewer:  Those were the days, eh? 
> Stroustrup:  Right. So what happened?  IBM got sick of it, and
> invested millions in training programmers, till they were a dime a
> dozen. 
> Interviewer:  That's why I got out. Salaries dropped within a year, to
> the point where being a journalist actually paid better. 
> Stroustrup:  Exactly. Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers. 
> Interviewer:  I see, but what's the point? 
> Stroustrup:  Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought
> of this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I
> thought 'I wonder what would happen, if there were a language so
> complicated, so difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be able to
> swamp the market with programmers?  Actually, I got some of the ideas
> from X10, you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics
> system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things.  They had all
> the ingredients for what I wanted. A really ridiculously complex
> syntax, obscure functions, and pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody
> writes raw X-windows code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to
> retain your sanity. 
> Interviewer:  You're kidding...? 
> Stroustrup:  Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem. Unix
> was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer could very
> easily become a systems programmer. Remember what a mainframe systems
> programmer used to earn? 
> Interviewer:  You bet I do, that's what I used to do. 
> Stroustrup:  OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from Unix,
> by hiding all the system calls that bound the two together so nicely.
> This would enable guys who only knew about DOS to earn a decent living
> too. 
> Interviewer:  I don't believe you said that... 
> Stroustrup:  Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most
> people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste of time
> but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I thought it would.
> 
> Interviewer:  So how exactly did you do it? 
> Stroustrup:  It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought people
> would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a brain can see that
> object-oriented programming is counter-intuitive, illogical and
> inefficient. 
> Interviewer:  What? 
> Stroustrup:  And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear of
> a company re-using its code? 
> Interviewer:  Well, never, actually, but... 
> Stroustrup:  There you are then. Mind you, a few tried, in the early
> days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor Graphics, I think they
> were called - really caught a cold trying to rewrite everything in C++
> in about '90 or '91. I felt sorry for them really, but I thought
> people would learn from their mistakes. 
> Interviewer:  Obviously, they didn't? 
> Stroustrup:  Not in the slightest. Trouble is, most companies hush-up
> all their major blunders, and explaining a $30 million loss to the
> shareholders would have been difficult.  Give them their due, though,
> they made it work in the end. 
> Interviewer:  They did?  Well, there you are then, it proves O-O
> works. 
> Stroustrup:  Well, almost. The executable was so huge, it took five
> minutes to load, on an HP workstation, with 128MB of RAM. Then it ran
> like treacle. Actually, I thought this would be a major
> stumbling-block, and I'd get found out within a week, but nobody
> cared. Sun and HP were only too 
> glad to sell enormously powerful boxes, with huge resources just to
> run trivial programs. You know, when we had our first C++ compiler, at
> AT&T, I compiled 'Hello World', and couldn't believe the size of the
> executable. 2.1MB Interviewer:  What?  Well, compilers have come a
> long way, since then. 
> Stroustrup:  They have?  Try it on the latest version of g++ - you
> won't get much change out of half a megabyte. Also, there are several
> quite recent examples for you, from all over the world. British
> Telecom had a major disaster on their hands but, luckily, managed to
> scrap the whole thing and start again. They were luckier than
> Australian Telecom. Now I hear that Siemens is building a dinosaur,
> and getting more and more worried as the size of the hardware gets
> bigger, to accommodate the executables. Isn't multiple inheritance a
> joy? 
> Interviewer:  Yes, but C++ is basically a sound language. 
> Stroustrup:  You really believe that, don't you?  Have you ever sat
> down and worked on a C++ project?  Here's what happens: 
> First, I've put in enough pitfalls to make sure that only the most
> trivial projects will work first time. Take operator overloading. At
> the end of the project, almost every module has it, usually, because
> guys feel they really should do it, as it was in their training
> course. The same operator then means something totally different in
> every module. Try pulling that lot together, when you have a hundred
> or so modules. And as for data hiding. God, I sometimes can't help
> laughing when I hear about the problems companies have making their
> modules talk to each other. I think the word 'synergistic' was
> specially invented to twist the knife in a project manager's ribs. 
> 
> Interviewer:  I have to say, I'm beginning to be quite appalled at all
> this. You say you did it to raise programmers' salaries?  That's
> obscene. 
> Stroustrup:  Not really. Everyone has a choice. I didn't expect the
> thing to get so much out of hand. Anyway, I basically succeeded. C++
> is dying off now, but programmers still get high salaries - especially
> those poor devils who have to maintain all this crap. You do realise,
> it's impossible to maintain a large C++ software module if you didn't
> actually write it? 
> Interviewer:  How come? 
> Stroustrup:  You are out of touch, aren't you?  Remember the typedef? 
> Interviewer:  Yes, of course. 
> Stroustrup:  Remember how long it took to grope through the header
> files only to find that 'RoofRaised' was a double precision number?
> Well, imagine how long it takes to find all the implicit typedefs in
> all the Classes in a major project. 
> Interviewer:  So how do you reckon you've succeeded? 
> Stroustrup:  Remember the length of the average-sized 'C' project?
> About 6 months. Not nearly long enough for a guy with a wife and kids
> to earn enough to have a decent standard of living. Take the same
> project, design it in C++ and what do you get?  I'll tell you. One to
> two years. Isn't that great?  All that job security, just through one
> mistake of judgement. And another thing. The universities haven't been
> teaching 'C' for such a long time, there's now a shortage of decent
> 'C' programmers. Especially those who know anything about Unix systems
> programming. How many guys would know what to do with 'malloc', when
> they've used 'new' all these years - and never bothered to check the
> return code. In fact, most C++ programmers throw away their return
> codes. Whatever happened to good ol' '-1'?  At least you knew you had
> an error, without bogging the thing down in all that 'throw' 'catch'
> 'try' stuff. 
> Interviewer:  But, surely, inheritance does save a lot of time? 
> Stroustrup:  Does it?  Have you ever noticed the difference between a
> 'C' project plan, and a C++ project plan?  The planning stage for a
> C++ project is three times as long. Precisely to make sure that
> everything which should be inherited is, and what shouldn't isn't.
> Then, they still get it wrong.  Whoever heard of memory leaks in a 'C'
> program?  Now finding them is a major industry. Most companies give
> up, and send the product out, knowing it leaks like a sieve, simply to
> avoid the expense of tracking them all down. 
> Interviewer:  There are tools... 
> Stroustrup:  Most of which were written in C++. 
> Interviewer:  If we publish this, you'll probably get lynched, you do
> realise that? 
> Stroustrup:  I doubt it. As I said, C++ is way past its peak now, and
> no company in its right mind would start a C++ project without a pilot
> trial. That should convince them that it's the road to disaster. If
> not, they deserve all they get. You know, I tried to convince Dennis
> Ritchie to rewrite Unix in C++. 
> 
> Interviewer:  Oh my God. What did he say? 
> Stroustrup:  Well, luckily, he has a good sense of humor. I think both
> he and Brian figured out what I was doing, in the early days, but
> never let on. He said he'd help me write a C++ version of DOS, if I
> was interested. 
> Interviewer:  Were you? 
> Stroustrup:  Actually, I did write DOS in C++, I'll give you a demo
> when we're through. I have it running on a Sparc 20 in the computer
> room. Goes like a rocket on 4 CPU's, and only takes up 70 megs of
> disk. 
> Interviewer:  What's it like on a PC? 
> Stroustrup:  Now you're kidding. Haven't you ever seen Windows '95? I
> think of that as my biggest success. Nearly blew the game before I was
> ready, though. 
> Interviewer:  You know, that idea of a Unix++ has really got me
> thinking. Somewhere out there, there's a guy going to try it. 
> Stroustrup:  Not after they read this interview. 
> Interviewer:  I'm sorry, but I don't see us being able to publish any
> of this. 
> Stroustrup:  But it's the story of the century. I only want to be
> remembered by my fellow programmers, for what I've done for them. You
> know how much a C++ guy can get these days? 
> Interviewer:  Last I heard, a really top guy is worth $70 - $80 an
> hour. 
> Stroustrup:  See?  And I bet he earns it. Keeping track of all the
> gotchas I put into C++ is no easy job. And, as I said before, every
> C++ programmer feels bound by some mystic promise to use every damn
> element of the language on every project. Actually, that really annoys
> me sometimes, even though it serves my original purpose. I almost like
> the language after all this time. 
> Interviewer:  You mean you didn't before? 
> Stroustrup:  Hated it. It even looks clumsy, don't you agree?  But
> when the book royalties started to come in... well, you get the
> picture. 
> Interviewer:  Just a minute. What about references?  You must admit,
> you improved on 'C' pointers. 
> Stroustrup:  Hmm. I've always wondered about that. Originally, I
> thought I had. Then, one day I was discussing this with a guy who'd
> written C++ from the beginning. He said he could never remember
> whether his variables were referenced or dereferenced, so he always
> used pointers. He said the little asterisk always reminded him. 
> Interviewer:  Well, at this point, I usually say 'thank you very much'
> but it hardly seems adequate. 
> Stroustrup:  Promise me you'll publish this. My conscience is getting
> the better of me these days. 
> Interviewer:  I'll let you know, but I think I know what my editor
> will say. 
> Stroustrup:  Who'd believe it anyway?  Although, can you send me a
> copy of that tape? 
> Interviewer:  I can do that. 
>