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On February 08 2015 06:40 Cyx. wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2015 06:26 Ropid wrote: I meant when you do something in C, you think about the data structure you need, then when you use it you write code that works on that, like you might manually move pointers around to insert elements in your linked list or whatnot instead of hiding that, while in C++ you'll probably use something neat that hides that perfectly. That allows you to not have to think about what's going on with those pointers and the heap and whatnot, meaning C++ helps you stay at a high-level if you want.
Then there's also OOP and using C++ libraries in general compared to C, which should all be simpler to use and hide stuff better and help a lot to stay thinking at a high-level. @nunez: example: std::string a = "hello"; std::string b = "world"; std::cout << a + b << std::endl; char a[] = "hello"; char b[] = "world"; char *c = malloc(strlen(a) + strlen(b) + 1);
strcpy(c, a); strcat(c, b);
printf("%s\n", c); One of these things is clear about the actual code being executed to concatenate two strings, while one is pretending it's not even happening at all  Not that I don't like C++ - I learned to program in C++ and it's still my favourite language - but it definitely hides things from you a lot of the time. Also, yeah there are web dev libs for C++, but do you *actually* think they're going to compare with PHP, a language literally *designed* for web dev?
Bad example. When you add two strings, C++ does what you expect. How is that 'hiding'? What more do you expect from a plus sign?
Edit: Don't you have memory leak too? You don't delete after malloc. :D
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On February 08 2015 11:11 darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2015 06:40 Cyx. wrote:On February 08 2015 06:26 Ropid wrote: I meant when you do something in C, you think about the data structure you need, then when you use it you write code that works on that, like you might manually move pointers around to insert elements in your linked list or whatnot instead of hiding that, while in C++ you'll probably use something neat that hides that perfectly. That allows you to not have to think about what's going on with those pointers and the heap and whatnot, meaning C++ helps you stay at a high-level if you want.
Then there's also OOP and using C++ libraries in general compared to C, which should all be simpler to use and hide stuff better and help a lot to stay thinking at a high-level. @nunez: example: std::string a = "hello"; std::string b = "world"; std::cout << a + b << std::endl; char a[] = "hello"; char b[] = "world"; char *c = malloc(strlen(a) + strlen(b) + 1);
strcpy(c, a); strcat(c, b);
printf("%s\n", c); One of these things is clear about the actual code being executed to concatenate two strings, while one is pretending it's not even happening at all  Not that I don't like C++ - I learned to program in C++ and it's still my favourite language - but it definitely hides things from you a lot of the time. Also, yeah there are web dev libs for C++, but do you *actually* think they're going to compare with PHP, a language literally *designed* for web dev? Bad example. When you add two strings, C++ does what you expect. How is that 'hiding'? What more do you expect from a plus sign? Edit: Don't you have memory leak too? You don't delete after malloc. :D
C++ hides the fact that memory allocation and function calls are necessary at all... and also the fact that you need to delete
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On February 08 2015 11:14 Cyx. wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2015 11:11 darkness wrote:On February 08 2015 06:40 Cyx. wrote:On February 08 2015 06:26 Ropid wrote: I meant when you do something in C, you think about the data structure you need, then when you use it you write code that works on that, like you might manually move pointers around to insert elements in your linked list or whatnot instead of hiding that, while in C++ you'll probably use something neat that hides that perfectly. That allows you to not have to think about what's going on with those pointers and the heap and whatnot, meaning C++ helps you stay at a high-level if you want.
Then there's also OOP and using C++ libraries in general compared to C, which should all be simpler to use and hide stuff better and help a lot to stay thinking at a high-level. @nunez: example: std::string a = "hello"; std::string b = "world"; std::cout << a + b << std::endl; char a[] = "hello"; char b[] = "world"; char *c = malloc(strlen(a) + strlen(b) + 1);
strcpy(c, a); strcat(c, b);
printf("%s\n", c); One of these things is clear about the actual code being executed to concatenate two strings, while one is pretending it's not even happening at all  Not that I don't like C++ - I learned to program in C++ and it's still my favourite language - but it definitely hides things from you a lot of the time. Also, yeah there are web dev libs for C++, but do you *actually* think they're going to compare with PHP, a language literally *designed* for web dev? Bad example. When you add two strings, C++ does what you expect. How is that 'hiding'? What more do you expect from a plus sign? Edit: Don't you have memory leak too? You don't delete after malloc. :D C++ hides the fact that memory allocation and function calls are necessary at all... and also the fact that you need to delete 
And why would you be concerned what happens internally (e.g. string allocates stuff in constructor and deletes in destructor)? All you know is that your string examples are stack objects, hence they're deleted when they go out of scope. As simple as that. It's the same in Java/C#/etc except you rely on the Garbage Collector.
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On February 08 2015 11:18 darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2015 11:14 Cyx. wrote:On February 08 2015 11:11 darkness wrote:On February 08 2015 06:40 Cyx. wrote:On February 08 2015 06:26 Ropid wrote: I meant when you do something in C, you think about the data structure you need, then when you use it you write code that works on that, like you might manually move pointers around to insert elements in your linked list or whatnot instead of hiding that, while in C++ you'll probably use something neat that hides that perfectly. That allows you to not have to think about what's going on with those pointers and the heap and whatnot, meaning C++ helps you stay at a high-level if you want.
Then there's also OOP and using C++ libraries in general compared to C, which should all be simpler to use and hide stuff better and help a lot to stay thinking at a high-level. @nunez: example: std::string a = "hello"; std::string b = "world"; std::cout << a + b << std::endl; char a[] = "hello"; char b[] = "world"; char *c = malloc(strlen(a) + strlen(b) + 1);
strcpy(c, a); strcat(c, b);
printf("%s\n", c); One of these things is clear about the actual code being executed to concatenate two strings, while one is pretending it's not even happening at all  Not that I don't like C++ - I learned to program in C++ and it's still my favourite language - but it definitely hides things from you a lot of the time. Also, yeah there are web dev libs for C++, but do you *actually* think they're going to compare with PHP, a language literally *designed* for web dev? Bad example. When you add two strings, C++ does what you expect. How is that 'hiding'? What more do you expect from a plus sign? Edit: Don't you have memory leak too? You don't delete after malloc. :D C++ hides the fact that memory allocation and function calls are necessary at all... and also the fact that you need to delete  And why would you be concerned what happens internally? All you know is that your string examples are stack objects, hence they're deleted when they go out of scope. As simple as that. It's the same in Java/C#/etc except you rely on the Garbage Collector.
Well, I mean, I didn't say it was a bad thing... I like C++ But it does allow you to hide many things which C exposes, by design.
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On February 08 2015 06:40 Cyx. wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2015 06:26 Ropid wrote: I meant when you do something in C, you think about the data structure you need, then when you use it you write code that works on that, like you might manually move pointers around to insert elements in your linked list or whatnot instead of hiding that, while in C++ you'll probably use something neat that hides that perfectly. That allows you to not have to think about what's going on with those pointers and the heap and whatnot, meaning C++ helps you stay at a high-level if you want.
Then there's also OOP and using C++ libraries in general compared to C, which should all be simpler to use and hide stuff better and help a lot to stay thinking at a high-level. @nunez: example: std::string a = "hello"; std::string b = "world"; std::cout << a + b << std::endl; char a[] = "hello"; char b[] = "world"; char *c = malloc(strlen(a) + strlen(b) + 1);
strcpy(c, a); strcat(c, b);
printf("%s\n", c); One of these things is clear about the actual code being executed to concatenate two strings, while one is pretending it's not even happening at all  Not that I don't like C++ - I learned to program in C++ and it's still my favourite language - but it definitely hides things from you a lot of the time. Also, yeah there are web dev libs for C++, but do you *actually* think they're going to compare with PHP, a language literally *designed* for web dev? The two are not equivalent. The c++ example has two strings on the stack, and you print the two variables in the same line. The c example makes two strings on the stack, then concatenates them one the heap as one variable and prints that.
Equivalent to you C++ example the C one would be:
char a[] = "hello"; char b[] = "world"; printf("%s%s", a, b); which would print helloworld like the c++ example with stack variables.
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the C++ equivalent of the C example is the C example.
functions are a tool for abstraction that is readily accessible in both C++ and C, you can add as many layers as you like in either language. that a layer of abstraction can be used to hide details is common knowledge...
destructors, constructors and non-builtin operators are function calls. the C++-ISO standard explicitly state the circumstances under which they are called, as well as semantics of the stdlib calls.
it's not given that the std::string example does any allocations, or deletes. you would hope that small string optimization is used and that no allocations are made. this is an implementation detail, if you wanted to assert what is really happening, you would have to look at the function definition, like with any other function.
"it's all greek to me" is not an accusation against greek.
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i mean, the semantics of applying the addition operator on two strings might be shrouded in ignorance, but it is explicitly stated in the standard for all to see! if you want to assert a particular implentation you would have to check the operator definition in the standard library you are using, but that is no different from any other function call in any other standard library call, whether that be C or C++.
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But clearly in the case of strcat it is - just from the name of the function - intuitively apparent to the beginner that it 1) concatenates 2 strings 2) it takes an array large enough to fit both strings 3) the first string already has to be in the array
Hint: none of these is actually intuitively apparent. strcat is a concatenation of 2 abbreviations. Hell, it could mean "strong cat". In the C++ case you actually have 2 string objects, and you place a + between them. What could that do? String concatenation in C++ isn't any less obvious than in C, it just uses a special function name and is written in infix form (if you have a problem with that, you probably should stay away from functional programming). And it requires a lot less preconditions to be met.
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help please.
i need a word with the following meaning: a statement that is not an expression. all i got is: NonExpression... NExpression... Nexpression...
for now i'm going with Nexpression.
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Statements can be considered the opposite of expressions. An expression returns a value, a statement does not. The idea in functional languages is that everything is an expression, nothing is a statement.
But generally speaking I don't think there's a word for !expression ahah, technically everything can be an expression, can you give examples of !expressions?
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i should have specified it's given that expressions are included in the set of statements. i was praying for a more elegant descriptor than NotExpression for describing the complement of expressions in statements.
what speaks for it is the symmetry in length between Not,Lhs,Rhs, and the apparent lack of alternatives... NotExpression, LhsExpression, RhsExpression.
what speaks against it is that it's a negation (not an elegant way of expressing something, hehehe) and ambiguity with respect to the logical negation operator or 'not-operator'.
defining Statements and Expressions as separate, like you suggest Blisse, seems like a superior solution. however i'd need a word for the union of the two. Symbol could suffice.
i am leaning towards the latter solution atm. i will go have a coffee, then decide.
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one million years dungeon!
i decided to go with blisses suggestion.
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In OP there is a quote comparing programming languages depending on how close they are to the machine. It says: " Machine Lang Assembly C C++/Java/C# ..." This is utterly missleading and incorrect. C++ is a superset of C, it is compiled directly to native code (unless you do some gross CLR, which you can in C aswell). It is no further from the machine than C is. You can use every single C feature in it. C# and Java are highly abstract languages. They dont compile to native code. The applications run in what is called a "virtual machine" (no not the vmware kind), actively translating instructions and such. You lose a lot of capabilities using those languages such as being able to communicate directly to hardware. Comparing C++ to those 2 is missleading, wrong and insulting to any serious C++ programmer. The list should say "C/C++". Please fix OP.
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On February 08 2015 20:27 Dumbledore wrote: In OP there is a quote comparing programming languages depending on how close they are to the machine. It says: " Machine Lang Assembly C C++/Java/C# ..." This is utterly missleading and incorrect. C++ is a superset of C, it is compiled directly to native code (unless you do some gross CLR, which you can in C aswell). It is no further from the machine than C is. You can use every single C feature in it. C# and Java are highly abstract languages. They dont compile to native code. The applications run in what is called a "virtual machine" (no not the vmware kind), actively translating instructions and such. You lose a lot of capabilities using those languages such as being able to communicate directly to hardware. Comparing C++ to those 2 is missleading, wrong and insulting to any serious C++ programmer. The list should say "C/C++". Please fix OP. The op can't edit a post that is older than 2 months iirc.
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On February 08 2015 20:21 nunez wrote: one million years dungeon!
i decided to go with blisses suggestion.
3 minute coffee run, that's fast o_O
yeah i was rereading some notes and binging some compiler/lexer/parser terminologies and couldn't find anything that fit !expression other than like, declaration (which could be an expression that returned void...). i guess depends a bit on how you could define expression o;
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On February 08 2015 20:27 Dumbledore wrote: In OP there is a quote comparing programming languages depending on how close they are to the machine. It says: " Machine Lang Assembly C C++/Java/C# ..." This is utterly missleading and incorrect. C++ is a superset of C, it is compiled directly to native code (unless you do some gross CLR, which you can in C aswell). It is no further from the machine than C is. You can use every single C feature in it. C# and Java are highly abstract languages. They dont compile to native code. The applications run in what is called a "virtual machine" (no not the vmware kind), actively translating instructions and such. You lose a lot of capabilities using those languages such as being able to communicate directly to hardware. Comparing C++ to those 2 is missleading, wrong and insulting to any serious C++ programmer. The list should say "C/C++". Please fix OP.
Uneducated question : As much as I agree with how you part C++ from Java and C#, are C and C++ really on the same "level" ? I was under the impression that one could write a C++ program without knowing what's going on with memory for exemple, whereas you can't really do that in C (I think). So it'd still be a level of abstraction higher. Wrong ?
one million years dungeon!
Whaaat ? :D
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the discussion which took place on the last two pages was really interesting, thanks for that.
@Ropid, I'm doing a master's degree in industrial engineering. Coding in VBA seems to have almost no link whatsoever to the rest of what we do, so I'm not really sure what the fuck we're doing. I decided to pick up C++ for fun, completely on my own.
So far I've written just one program, in C++, using visual C++. It will solve a basic univariate quadratic function. It was fun to do, I did it reading the first few pages of learncpp.com and using google whenever I couldn't get something to work (disregard the weird comments I used while writing):
+ Show Spoiler + #include "stdafx.h" // Uncomment this line if using Visual Studio #include <iostream> int main() { //telling the user what's up std::cout << "Dear Sir, regarding your recent enquiry as to me, the Computer, helping you do" << std::endl; std::cout << "your math homework, I have decided that I shall give you all the aid which you" << std::endl; std::cout << "shall need in order to successfully solve the math problem which has "<< std::endl; std::cout << "been bestowed upon you." << std::endl; std::cout << "I believe that indeed, you were given a polynomial equation to solve." << std::endl; std::cout << std::endl;
//initializing the first variables that the user will enter float a=0; float b=0; float c=0;
//the user will enter the variables for each value, whilst being treated like a gentleman: std::cout << "Let us begin. Good Sir, please enter the first coefficient: "<< std::endl; std::cin >> a;
std::cout << "Good Sir, please enter the second coefficient: "<< std::endl; std::cin >> b;
std::cout << "Good Sir, please enter the third coefficient: "<< std::endl; std::cin >> c; std::cout << std::endl;
//finding da determinant: float d=0; d=((pow(b,2))-4*a*c);
std::cout << d << std::endl; //checking if determinant is negative: if(d<0) { std::cout << "The determinant being negative, there is no solution." << std::endl; } else { //defining solutions and doing da maths: float x1=0; float x2=0;
x1=(-b+sqrt(d))/(2*a); x2=(-b-sqrt(d))/(2*a);
//portraying the result, which depends on the value of determinant: if(x1==x2) { std::cout << "The only solution to the equation is: " << x1 << std::endl; } else { std::cout << "The first solution to your problem would be: " << x1 << std::endl; std::cout << "This is the second result: " << x2 << std::endl; } }
//ending message std::cout << std::endl; std::cout << "My regards have been sent. Press enter to cheerio."<< std::endl;
//preventing the retarded console from shutting down on its own std::cin.clear(); std::cin.ignore(255, '\n'); std::cin.get(); return 0; }
Having read the OP, I might drop C++ for now and concentrate on Assembly or C, since apparently those languages are closer to the actual machine. Learning those would make me understand programming on a more "fundamental" level. Not entirely sure.
This is mostly just a hobby I'm starting, really for fun. However it seems that coding can be dangerous if self taught. For example, in my program:
if(x1==x2)
Originally, I wrote " if(x1=x2) " and what the program would do is always give me two solutions which were equal. I find it somewhat alarming that the condition I set for an "if loop" would actually transform x2 instead. Using a bit of google, I found that a work if loop in another program just used "==" instead of "="; when I edited my line with that, it ended up working.
I find this similar to playing with fire for some reason, like learning to code this way might have me ignoring really fundamental concepts or something.
The reason I started with C++ over C or Java was that C++ seemed to be the powerful, no bullshit language. However I'm now in doubt (especially when reading the post just above mine).
PS: everyone uses "return 0;" but I still don't know why the hell it's there. To return 0 to the machine so it knows that the program finished? Why would we need to do that? If the program works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't. The machine doesn't care, it's just there to execute codes.
Or it it?
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Your main function returns an int, so you got to return an int to end it. What you return (so long as it is an int) and what it means is up to you, although I guess there are some convention. For me, -1 is an error occured, 0 nothing was done, 1 is all good.
Don't your compiler tells you about using if (x1 = x2) ? Fairly sure mine does (gcc with flags -Werror etc to show all errors). if ((x1 = x2)) would work, not with a single pair of parenthesis.
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C++ can do everything C can. C++ just has some lower level abstractions than C# and Java and co. to structure C code in different ways so you don't have to rewrite code that should already exist for you. The "==" example is just you having to learn that you need to be extremely explicit when talking to a compiler, not so much ignoring fundamental concepts, but very much so playing with fire in that you can't approximate your code to the result (= assignment is not the same as == comparison in this language) and expect it to work :p This will happen regardless of the language you use.
C is the no bullshit language. Once you understand C there's little to be surprised about when you read new C code (except poor coding style). That's why people love C.
C++ is the no bullshit language with for the most part clear (besides heavy use of templates), available shortcuts if you want, but otherwise you can just write valid C and it mostly compiles in C++.
You return 0 in main() to signify success. If I'm calling your executable from somewhere else and I need to know if it worked or failed, checking if it returned 0 is a standard sign of success. You're forced to do it because main is declared as "int main" because returning an int is a standard for C++ return codes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_status).
Industrial engineering doesn't have much to do with programming so learning C/C++ is a wasted endeavor if you're doing it because of your degree. Learning about coding and how programming works is important because you gain an understanding of the processes involved with coding, and you'll need that if you need to create/optimize software systems. I would learn C though because C skills are probably the most transferable across the industry - if you don't understand a high level concept in another language, asking someone to explain the equivalent in C is usually possible. However, I would say C++ would be a more effective use of time coding because learning C is actually a learning experience and will take time before you get anywhere complex, versus other languages. Learning ASM has no potential unless you work on really really really cheap hardware (which usually still runs C at least) or processors (which still run Verilog I think), or you want to debug code that you only had binaries for. These aren't typically in a Industrial Engineer's job descriptions (may vary), so they're probably not of maximal value to you.
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