Re:On Apple's Love Affair with Swift
by speedplane on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @12:20AM
(#17763749)
Regarding #1, disagree. In C, a function call is just a request to send the instruction pointer to another point in the memory space. In C, code is treated as data, which is how it's treated in hardware.
C++ introduces virtual functions, and when you make a function call, you're no longer going to a single place in memory, you go to where the class's virtual function table tells you to go, effectively jumping to a memory pointer. This is pretty helpful, but it's an incredibly different way to think about code. A function is no longer a set of instructions in memory, it's a logical representation of functionality.
And yes, I know in C, you can set a variable to a function location, and then jump there, but it's painful to do and you have to do it explicitly, so it doesn't really create an abstraction.
C++ introduces virtual functions, and when you make a function call, you're no longer going to a single place in memory, you go to where the class's virtual function table tells you to go, effectively jumping to a memory pointer. This is pretty helpful, but it's an incredibly different way to think about code. A function is no longer a set of instructions in memory, it's a logical representation of functionality.
And yes, I know in C, you can set a variable to a function location, and then jump there, but it's painful to do and you have to do it explicitly, so it doesn't really create an abstraction.