[Freeciv-Dev] Re: reqs and languages (was curiosity).

[Andrew Sutton <ansutton@xxxxxxx>]

so the list boils down to c vs. c++ on the basis of performance and developer 
familiarity.

you know what? i went about this wrong. you're supposed to pick the language 
after you know what the requirements of you system are. the reason being that 
knowing the requirements will help you pick a language suited to the 
implementation. we aren't really doing that. we're discussing the finer 
points of language without a real basis for decision.

so... here's a short list of requirements. these aren't ranked; they just all 
bear the same priority.

- modular
- OO in nature
- extensibility
- performance
- maintainability
- highly available server
- fast server
- portability

both c and c++ allow implementations with the above requirements - in as much 
as the performance of c(++) applications is faster than java applications. 
however, OO in c is really ugly and defining OO capabilities for c makes the 
code less readable (e.g. macro casting) and can contribute to the degradation 
of performance. c++ has portability issues because it hasn't been around as 
long as c. c and c++ perform equally well (unless you're doing really 
complicated stuff).

c++, whether we think so or not, does have standardized tools for common 
tasks (STL). additionally, c++ wrappers like ACE provide higher availability 
for different platforms making portability a non-issue for c++.

build time is a non-issue.

discussion?