Three Weighty Items
First, a reassurance: there is no April Fool’s stuff in this issue. Been there, done that. Call me a humorless curmudgeon, but there it is. Likewise, there are no subliminal messages on the cover (are there, Twyla?), no secret codes in the Letters section; just the facts, sir or madam, as we perceive them.
Item two. From time to time a reader asks, “Which C++ compiler is best?” I have replied, perhaps a little ungraciously, that it was a naive question, as inadmissable as the question, “Which wine is best?” without an attendant for clause (“for dinner parties,” “for gallery openings,” “for helping me forget about the gas bill,” etc.). Yet I have also wondered if my response might have been too dismissive, that surely there must be something we could do to “evaluate” a compiler beyond reading all the lore in newsgroups and magazines. A few other people have thought the same thing, and they have undertaken a herculean effort to do that — well, sort of. What they have attempted to measure is how well popular compilers and libraries conform to the C++ Standard. The results of their efforts are printed in this issue (see “C++ Conformance Roundup,” on p. 8), along with certain important caveats. I urge interested readers to study the article in its entirety; don’t just jump to the tables, but read the vendor comments, the experts’ comments, and mine. After all is said and done, I consider this roundup an experiment in measuring conformance; it is an interesting experiment, and one that has much to teach us, but not necessarily what the experimenters set out to learn. I would be interested to hear what readers think.
Finally, I must end on a sad note. It is time for us to say farewell to a long-time friend and columnist, Pete Becker, who has been with the magazine since June of 1995. Pete is not going away mad, but swamped, which is the natural equilibrium state of our contributors. This accords with the counterintuitive wisdom that if you want to get something done, ask someone who is already busy. I can attest that our columnists do write mostly out of the goodness of their hearts. They certainly do not do so for the pay, which (as they are ever so eager to remind me) is miniscule compared to their earnings in other endeavors. We are very grateful to Pete for all the lessons he has taught us in his Journeyman’s Shop about developing solid code. We wish him well, and hope that he will visit these pages again.
Marc Briand
Editor-in-Chief