Been there.....done that.....
Back in time there was a family of languages called Algol. They're the grandparents of the block structured language, its where you'd first find curly braces and semicolons. A very popular version was the 1960 model, Algol 60, which worked but had a few imperfections. These were fixed for the version Algol 68. It was a superb language with just one slight snag -- it was effectively unimplementable on the machines available at that time. Various implementations were made but most were panned as impure, not worthy or whatever.
C++ is in danger of going down the same rabbit hole -- if it isn't lost already. Its worse for us because at least all Algol sprung on us was a "Revised Report...", a well thought out theoretical document. C++ started off as an incremental improvement to a systems programming language (one that should never have been used to write user applications in), it gained wide currency because it just happened to be a useful shorthand for writing GUI applications in, it got widely taught and so it just morphed and morphed like the terror from some naff 50s sci-fi movie. Common sense, please -- some of us have do deal with the fallout from people who know all about how to write object oriented programs (but wouldn't necessarily know an object if they tripped over one...). This language has caused me so much grief over the years that if I'm in a position to make the decision I'll ban it (embedded programming and poor quality C++ are a particularly noxious combination!).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
