Re: [Boost-users] C++ and quality of software

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] C++ and quality of software
From: Patrick Horgan (phorgan1_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-01-26 17:23:13

Peter Foelsche wrote:
> I was thinking. There should be some C++ software quality assurance 
> institution. They would give a stamp of approval to software written 
> in C++. Criteria would be:
>  a.. no usage fixed-sized buffers
There are many instances where fixed-sized buffers are the best design.
>  b.. no usage of functions from the c library, which do not check for 
> correct type, like *printf(), *scanf().
While I don't use these myself in new code, when maintaining other's 
code who do, I don't consider it a quality issue for well written 
debugged code to use these.
>  c.. no dangling resources, no resource leaks in any case
Yeah, that's pretty basic--you might as well add no access to 
uninitialized variables.
>  d.. usage of C++ Exception Handling for reporting errors (all 
> fallible OS-calls are wrapped into C++, this can be checked by denying 
> read/write permissions on some object, the software is trying to 
> read/write to)
This is a bit silly.  There are times where exception handling is 
perfect and times when it is not, and they are often mixed.  I'm 
thinking that you aren't a system programmer.  Often time system calls 
return to you error codes and you use that to make a decision.  That 
might be to retry, give up, throw an exception, return a code, etc.  
Your idea is too draconian and rules out many good design patterns.
>  e.. clean design -- e.g. no protocols (no protocols is my way of 
> saying, that all methods of classes can be used and make sense to be 
> used, as soon as this object exists)
This just confuses me.  I'm not sure what the word protocol means 
here--that an object can't keep state and have different behavior over 
time maybe???  If that's it, an fstream would fail, because you can't 
use most of it before open().  Strange.
> What do you think?
The whole thing seems of limited use.  You mistake limiting flexibility 
for good quality I think.

Patrick