{"id":970,"date":"2012-05-16T10:03:20","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T10:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/?p=970"},"modified":"2012-05-16T10:04:09","modified_gmt":"2012-05-16T10:04:09","slug":"yes-alex-the-standard-doesnt-mention-the-stack-and-thats-fine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/2012\/05\/yes-alex-the-standard-doesnt-mention-the-stack-and-thats-fine\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes Alex, The Standard Doesn't Mention The Stack, And That's Fine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Darby writes about "the Stack"<\/a>, referring to both the ISO standard and Bjarne's C++ book and complains that they both evade the concept of a stack or a heap as used for laying-out objects in memory:<\/p>\n

\n

But the fact that the standard text on C++ all but ignores something as core to the internal operation of C++ as the Stack is telling indeed. In my experience, this is symptomatic of the disconnect between programming language and underlying implementation that exists in the academic mindset.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In fact, it's very deliberate, and has nothing to do with academia. You shouldn't need to know about implementation details like a memory stack or heap because (a) you're writing in a programming language that abstracts those details away from you, and (b) they are implementation-specific. In Bjarne's case he's writing only about C++, not how some specific platform implements it. It's a book about the language<\/em>, not the computer<\/em> that compiles it into another language.<\/p>\n

Understanding this abstraction is key to writing good, portable code. That's why he's done it and it's a good<\/em> thing.<\/p>\n

When books jump into talking about a "stack" or "heap", they are mistraining people into thinking that these are part of C++ when they are in fact programming with a combination of technologies including C++, machine code, a stick of memory, an OS… and Darby seems to have fallen into that trap, as his article gives the impression that he believes a stack is a core part of C++ itself. Indeed, Bjarne is correct to talk instead about the notion of storage duration<\/em>, which is the only thing the C++ language defines on the matter.<\/p>\n

Of course, that's not to say that such details should be forever ignored or that we should pretend that, say, an x86 machine doesn't typically use a stack. Certainly in the game development world, a programmer must be aware of lower-level implementation details. I'm not advocating some academic approach that completely removes real-world components from the equation.<\/p>\n

It'd just be helpful if Darby didn't pretend that these lower-level details were actually part of C++ at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alex Darby writes about "the Stack", referring to both the ISO standard and Bjarne's C++ book and complains that they both evade the concept of a stack or a heap as used for laying-out objects in memory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[21,20,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":972,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions\/972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}