Ugh, in C under UNIX this could mean two things:

* If some moron created a "write()" macro, it means expand
that macro (preferably it should also mean email the director of HR to suggest the author of the macro consider having the company pay for their MBA, to make sure they aren't allowed to touch code again)

* Otherwise, if a header has a definition for write use that. Otherwise, emit instructions to call put "fd, buf, size" on the stack and call write.

In C++ it could mean:

* There's a class "write" which has a constructor that takes three arguments

* There's a function in the global namespace called "write" that takes three arguments

* There's a macro called write

* There's method called write in the local class. That method could be invoked virtually or non-virtually. It could be inherited from a parent class.

* write could be an instance of an class that has "operator ()" defined

I probably left out some more. In fact, there's likely a firm somewhere that thinks "what could write(a, b, c) mean in C++" is a wonderful interview question (perhaps they could ask it to all those losers who don't know what "explicit" keyword does but still have the gall to think they're competent enough to work for them!)

In a UNIX system, with right headers included, what write does is specified by the POSIX API. POSIX is one of the best defined and cleanest APIs. It has existed before the world of IDEs and plug-and-play libraries. I can write non-blocking C network code for a UNIX OS with vi, from muscle memory after reading through man pages and working through Richard Stevens books.

Writing Java NIO code requires: an IDE to prevent RSI, traversing Javadocs to understand the non-intuitive APIs and searching mailing lists through Google to e.g., find out that Java NIO selector doesn't let me use edge triggered epoll because it would involve "tight coupling" (read: it might be difficult for somebody writing code on an AS/400 to use it).

JDK7 NIO2 potentially changes this (I can implement internals of a selector myself). I'm also sure I'll be able to target JDK7 with a Perl6 compiler... that I'll use to implement the firmware for my flying car, in which I'll travel pick up Hans Reiser when he's paroled from prison.

Note: in this case, it has nothing to do with the language. java.util.concurrent API is very well defined because it was written by great programmers (Doug Lea and Joshua Bloich) who are apt at API design. Unfortunately, Java doesn't "force you" to create a clean API like C does: there are no design patterns available, no IDEs, no built-in tools for literate programming in C; you either build a clean API, or no one will use it. While I'm in no way of Joshua Bloch's caliber, I can relate to him when he says that he stayed with imperative C until finding Java.

While Java doesn't force you to build a clean API, C++ almost makes it impossible to build a clean API: witness boost::spirit ("generic programming", C++'s idiom for extending the language), compare with lex/yacc (external DSLs) and parser combinators (internal DSLs) in Haskell or Scala.

I want to like C++. I have programmed it for a living before and will almost certainly do so again: there's a certain combination that requires low-level code with no memory management and Object Orientation; my chosen specialty (distributed systems) often requires that combination (fortunately, not always: Erlang and JVM languages have been used to build some incredibly impressive systems).

Perhaps Go and D could come along and step up to that challenge, but I am skeptical: Modula-3, despite influencing other languages hasn't been able to step up to that plate. I feel C++ 0x, Intel collections for C++ and some parts of boost, STL and tr1 e.g., tr1::unordered_map, boost::scoped_ptr are very cool and useful. Boost Graph library is simply awesome and has no equivalent.

It seems, though, as if C++ was built by warring hordes: one horde that wanted generic programming and thought OO was pointless, another horde that wanted OO but thought generic programming was pointless and yet another that hated both. Neither won nor lost, each side said "mission accomplished" and developers were treated as "collateral damage". I could care less about which one of those to use: I am productive doing OO programming in Perl, Python, Scala and Java. I am also productive doing generic programming with CLOS in Common Lisp or with type classes (or their equivalents) in statically typed languages. Likewise, I am perfectly productive writing imperative code in C. I just want clean, easy to program to APIs with understandable error messages (either at run time or compile time, I am not picky about dynamic vs. static typing -- they're tools, means to an end) and C++ doesn't allow for that.