[TriLUG] RE: dev resurgence -- my two cents/rant

[Michael Alan Dorman]

"Brian A. Henning" <lugmail at cheetah.dynip.com> writes:
> Doesn't that suck?  Yeah, I'm a C coder.  C++ as well, and I've been irked
> for a long time by the deprecating the .h off of header files.  Yeah,
> *h*eader files!  I thought that's why extensions were devised in the first
> place.  Granted they have lost (and should lose) some meaning over time, but
> I personally believe standardizing them into oblivion is rediculous.

I believe the decision to deprecate the .h extension in C++ (I hadn't
heard about this happening in C---which I wouldn't expect to be up for
a rev for at least another three or four years), is the result of a
desire to change the way people thought about the files; specifically,
to get people to stop thinking of them as "preprocessor files", and
more as interface declarations, etc.

If you read Stroustrup's _The Design and Evolution oc C++_, he talks
about the compromises he made at the beginning in order to allow C++
to work with standard tools---linkers and the like---and the impact it
had later on in tying him to certain C-based expectations that he
feels keep it from achieving its fullest potential.

The C preprocessor shows up prominently in that discussion.

Mike
-- 
Tired eyes on the sunrise, waiting for the eastern glow -- Led Zeppelin