Abstract machines are the core of what defines a programming language. A wide variety of operating systems and plethora of hardware ensures a bewildering number of things we call computers. When […]
Abstract Machines, Interpreters and Compilers
What’s to love about C?
Antiquated, clunky, and unsafe. Though beloved to some, C is a language that many choose to hate. The mass opinion is indeed so negative it’s hard to believe that anybody would program […]
How to choose a programming language?
Each new project, whether a standalone program, or a component for an existing program, faces a choice of programming language. Just using what is most popular, or what has been done before, […]
Everything wrong with exceptions
In my previous article I looked at a basic reason why exceptions are necessary. In retrospect it was more of a look at why simple error codes are insufficient; it isn’t clear […]
The Necessity of Exceptions
Exceptions often get a bad rap. They are called ineffective, inefficient, and hard to work with. In a way such accusations aren’t unfair, as most languages have totally screwed up their implementation. […]
Performance is irrelevant
Asking questions about performance online universally invites scorn and accusation. A large number of programmers apparently feel that the efficiency of code is nowadays insignificant. So long as the functional requirements have […]
Never use the “continue” keyword!
I was looking through some questions on StackOverflow last week when I came across a curious answer. In it there was a link to a coding standard that forbade the use of […]
What is reference counting?
Objects are created, live for a while, and then destroyed. While creation is fairly clear, the when and how of destruction is fairly language dependent. In languages like C you’re basically on […]
What’s an object? What’s a variable?
A variable is is the most fundamental concept in programming. You can’t do anything without variables. Yet most languages let you gloss over what these actually are. Simplicity often hides the truth. […]
Dangerous and confusing casting
Casting in C++ is a confusing jumble of unclear and dangerous operations. It mixes unrelated concepts. It introduces ambiguities and redundancies. It’s an essential but flawed aspect of the language.
Requirements for a Concurrent (Threaded) Library / API
Multithreaded programming in a perfect environment can be frustrating. It becomes infuriating when dealing with a plethora of libraries each with their own notion of thread-safety. As concurrency has evolved so have […]
Mismatched Allocation and Delete Nonsense
Efficient yet confused. Powerful but unsafe. So is the nature of C++ object allocation and instantiation.
Implicit Type Promotion and Conversion
C introduced it and C++ mastered it. The hellish world of implicit conversion and type promotion. A system which silently modifies, truncates, rounds, and otherwise mangles our variables.
The Ideal Language has “goto”
“goto”: the demonized programming construct. This little expression allows you to jump to somewhere else in the code while skipping the expressions in between. Opponents say it leads to spaghetti code and […]
Musing Mortoray 