Comment by Ragnarork | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ragnarork | Hacker News Reader

I'm looking forward for the next part, as the last three myths are the ones I'm waiting for their answers, as they should be pretty interesting.

C++ has come a long way, and I really feel C++ 11 could very well replace Java as a learning language for computer science students (I don't think it'd be a good choice for an introduction to programming for non CS students), and I see many benefits in this, the biggests being IMHO C++ NOT being fully object-oriented, and the possibility to do either low- or high-level stuff, depending on what you're teaching.

My biggest issue with most garbage collection implementations is the lack of RAII. While I love the ease of reading and writing Python or Lua, I'd love to be able to create a local object, like an open file or a database connection, and have it destructed immediately on return.

I'm not sure about Lua, but for Python it sounds like you may be interested in the "with" statement.

You can do this in all modern GC languages.

Either with a using/try with resources/with construct, or by using closures.

    // Pseudo language with FP capabilities
    let withFile filename action = 
        let fd = open filename
        action fd
        close fd

    withFile "config.sys" (fun fd -> write (readlines fd))

Real production code would also take care about proper closing the file in case of errors.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com