C++ Question Help with pointers

[Enjo]

(And I really hate being in such meetings. I am a software developer, no manager therapist.)

That killed it alright.

 

[kamaz]

Sat in a big meeting this morning and saw egos totally mess up a great idea.. :facepalm:

 

[Col_Klonk]

Point is...

... C was designed on PDP-11 and mirrors a lot of internal architecture of that system (notably this is why it has ++ and --) which the creators wrongly thought to be universal.

I arrived on the scene at I presume was the end of the PDP-11 era... a 10MB platter disk change was ..well a weight lifting exercise (but I was fit then :lol
Our PDP-11 ran 9600 rs232 links to 8085 'PC' kits that we made ourselves (with pc-tape/etching/manual soldering) for the student labs... stuff worked brilliantly.

No GUI, it all was text based.. the good old days
I'd actually decoded the original IBM PC BIOS down to it's minute detail... and repaired the darn things.. :thumbup:

From then I was 'hooked; on assembler. although I've done Pascal, C, turbo C C++, VB etc... whatever it was.. I was never impressed with Ritchie and Kernigan and really disappointed when Bill went the C route for windows OS.

Maybe businesses required fast dev times and buggy software... :facepalm: and haven't we've seen this non-stop for decades ?

 

[Urwumpe]

Maybe businesses required fast dev times and buggy software...

Businesses have to care for their money, thus in my experience, government software is far worse in terms of quality. Government does more than only such highly standardized software development like done for avionics.

Also fast dev times are a sign of a good professional software development team. Long dev times and cost overruns happen way more often, if you do a supertanker approach to development. The trick of agile software development is not, that the software is developed faster (it is not), but that you need far less corrections before your customer can accept it. And these corrections before and after release are the cost drivers. If you do it properly, your software is tested against a production-like environment at least once per sprint - instead of waiting until the end of development.

Even NASA does agile software development now, they use a commercial, modified Scrum approach called SAFe for developing the SLS software.

http://scaledagileframework.com/the-safe-way-to-lean-software-development/

 

[jedidia]

The trick of agile software development is not, that the software is developed faster (it is not)

Well, if you're doing crap, it certainly fails faster. Which is exactly what you want.

 

[Enjo]

... the fact that we handle new embedded architectures by re-targeting gcc does not help either because people think that "gcc is gcc" and if so they can get away with what they can do on linux/x86... no they can't...

The software I produce isn't meant to be ran on an embedded system. My int assumption here is right.

Maybe businesses required fast dev times and buggy software... :facepalm: and haven't we've seen this non-stop for decades ?

You can make bugs in Assembler too.

 

[Col_Klonk]

You can make bugs in Assembler too.

True.. what I've found is that most times, in Asm if you make a bug.. it's 'in your face', and the code just doesn't work - so one is forced to get it right, which takes longer to do - you do your debugging before release.

Whereas in higher level languages bugs can creep in un-noticed more easily, but as mentioned this also depends on the experience of the developer in both cases.
This is of course not talking about the algorithms 'invented' by either developer.. that's another story.

I'm just more fussy in getting things right, so invariably choose the harder way.:thumbup:

 

[Loru]

O-F Staff note: Please stay on topic. For discussing advantages of one language over another you can create "Programming language wars MEGATHREAD" in Brighton lounge.

 

[Col_Klonk]

Yeah.. I'm sure we all know that, and were very civilised in not going down that road :thumbup:

None the less, I'm sure the discussion was informative to the the OP (and others)

 

[Face]

None the less, I'm sure the discussion was informative to the the OP (and others)

Well, the OP left at post #4 with an "it works" message AFAIK. I'm pretty sure he did not follow the assembler talk at all. :shrug:

 

[Col_Klonk]

Sure.. but nothing like understanding how/why it works

 

[Col_Klonk]

Some resource info for the C, C++ developers...
http://www.agner.org/optimize/