On Monday, November 25, 2019 05:54:32 AM Guy Cpp via SG20 wrote:
> Thanks everyone: I'm just watching the feedback rolling in and considering
> my position. Please don't stop your input nor think I don't care: I would
> rather wait until there's a bit of silence before I dive in with my
> responses.

From the peanut gallery, I was trying to decide whether to make any kind of
response or not.

I cannot say that I know C or C++, I can say that I pretty much "hate" them,
as I've always found it very hard to read other people's code or write my own
(although I have written a few short C programs, and one which I believe,
while written as C, also compiles "as" C++ (that is, as part of a bigger
program written in C++) -- maybe the others, do, also, but I haven't tried).

One thing that I find to be a pain and difficult to grasp is all the
"infrastructure" that needs to be in place and used when you write a C or C++
program -- the right compiler, the right compiler switches, include files and
where they need to be or can be located, the debugger, git (or similar code
management programs), that program (can't remember the name), that helps you
find the definition or uses of an object defined in a different file (and why that
doesn't always work), and some other similar things that don't come to mind at
the moment, and which you don't have to fool too much with in many other
languages (like Python, Pascal, Perl, ... (maybe because the programs tend to
be much smaller?).

I don't know if your book would be an appropriate place to cover these items,
but I haven't found the easily grok-able information on those subjects that
I'd like to have found.

(I need / want to write a lexer (for highlighting / folding text or code) for
a customized markup language for scintilla which is a C++ program (an editing
"widgit". Although there are other languages that could be used to write a
lexer for scintilla (like Lua, and maybe quite a few other languages that
might be used to write a lexer), there are reasons why I'd prefer that it be
written in C++ (among them: things like lexers written in Lua or external
lexers are not supported by all editors that use scintilla, and, I think the
possibility of using an external lexer may be going away (becoming
deprecated).)

By the way, I am looking for students or people that for some other reason
might want to help with writing such a lexer. I had someone give me a start,
but what is done has a bug, and there is a lot more to do. If anyone here
knows of students (or maybe teachers, teaching assistants, or professors who
need to have a project for their students to work on), I have such a project
;-)

Have a good day!