Re: [pygame] MMX Transform for Win32

["Brian Fisher" <brian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 2:40 PM, Marcus von Appen <mva@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>  C++ adds a lot of unnecessary overhead, limits the portability and makes
>  anything just a bit harder.
>
with respect to unnecessary overhead, if you don't use a C++ feature
it doesn't add any overhead at all to the compiler output over
compiling the same code as C (that was one of Stroustrop's key design
goals when making C++). The C++ feature AGG uses the most is
templating (it almost never uses virtual functions), which adds no
overhead at all, and is far superior to trying to achieve the same
goals of templating using just C. What specific overhead would someone
expect to be added simply by using C++ compilers?

In terms of portability, in terms of agg code, it's already highly
tested and developed to be portable, and it doesn't use stl or other
c++ portability pitfalls. So the issue would just be the portability
of C++ in general - so what platforms don't have c++ compilers that
are readily available if not already built in to the same package that
provides C compiling?

As far as the idea of C++ making anything just a bit harder - I
completely disagree in that C++ is a much better C compiler (scoping
of variables, declare them anywhere you want, a bool type) so
everything is easier until you run into a C++ construct you just
haven't learned yet. But specifically in the case of agg, it uses
templates which can be confusing and awkward at first - but using
agg's configurable graphics pipeline system to do rendering stuff is
ultimately way easier than trying to write C code to do the same stuff
because it's so flexible and easy to adapt (basically it's a solution
that front loads some early complexity for huge productivity gains).
What specifically do people think they'd find harder in this case?