use Perl

• Skeptical (Score:1)

  by educated_foo (3106)

  I'm skeptical. When I turn to CPAN, it's often because I need to quickly satisfy some short-term need mostly unconnected to my existing code. On the other hand, I would guess that most C projects involve enhancing some long-standing infrastructure. This means there's a lot more room for incompatibility between CCAN contributions. It would be an interesting experiment, but I think too many people are locked into their own string libraries, hash tables, etc. for it to work.
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by ChrisDolan (2855)

    I don't know, it seems to me that Boost has made a big impact for one. It's everywhere in the C++ world. Sure, legacy projects have lock in -- that's true in every language -- but not new projects.
    • Re: (Score:1)

      by educated_foo (3106)

      The problem with Boost (and the reason I don't use it) is that to use one Boost library, you almost have to use them all. It's like adding a whole other language: you pay an enormous up-front cost for using a single feature, so it makes sense to avoid Boost unless you have to use many features.
      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ChrisDolan (2855)

        Well, maybe that's because they don't have a CCAN to allow cherry-picking features. :-)
      • Re: (Score:1)

        by chromatic (983)

        That's a pity, too. From my understanding (as I try to avoid C++ in general), Boost makes the language much more palatable at the expense of violating the principal design principle: you don't pay for what you don't use. (Then again, I always hate writing code to convince the compiler not to do the wrong thing by default, so maybe C++ isn't very good at that rule itself.)
        • Re: (Score:1)

          by educated_foo (3106)

          Yeah, C++ may not be for you. I really like the language for its "pay only for what you use" and compile-time evaluation (template metaprogramming) features, but there is significant pain required for each.