2 Mar
2025
2 Mar
'25
2:14 a.m.
At 2025-03-01T20:07:42-0600, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
If it did, it _still_ might have made sense, because
while I was only
barely conscious of the C++ marketplace at the time, with the language's
standardization nigh (for definitions of "nigh" stretching out many more
years than anyone planned), Sun's compiler guys might have feared giving
up mindshare and influence on the future ISO C++ to Borland or
Microsoft.
I forgot to mention some support for this argument. I quote Bjarne
Stroustrup in the 4th edition of his central C++ book.
"Clearly, the 1998 language was far superior in features and in
particular the detail of specification to the 1989 language. However,
not all changes were improvements. In addition to the inevitable minor
mistakes, two major features were added that should not have been:
* Exception specifications provide run-time enforcement of which
exceptions a function is allowed to throw. They were added at the
energetic initiative of people from Sun Microsystems. Exception
specifications turned out to be worse than useless for improving
readability, reliability, and performance. They are deprecated
(scheduled for removal) in the 2011 standard. ..." (p. 26)
Regards,
Branden