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The Old Man and the C

Evan Adams
Sun Microsystems

Abstract

"You can't teach an old dog new tricks" goes the old proverb. This is a story about a pack of old dogs (C programmers) and their odyssey of trying to learn new tricks (C++ programming).

C++ is a large, complex language which can easily be abused, but also includes many features to help programmers more quickly write higher quality code. The TeamWare group consciously decided which C++ features to use and, just as importantly, which features not to use. We also incrementally adopted those features we chose to use. This resulted in a successful C++ experience.

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