[hibikir]

When we go back to early Java, the death of books just came from better IDEs, not even stack overflow (which wasn't there) or Google search (which had little to find). Something like IntelliJ made the very large reference section irrelevant, as you got to see source and Javadocs right there. Intellisense also found most of what you needed blindly. That was 90% of those 6 java books. You'd still see a need for specifics good explanations like, say, Java concurrency in practice for all the original low level primitives. Maybe some madman that could explain the initial implementation of the Calendar classes.

Either way, one needed far smaller books the moment all of that came in, especially because in Java, library code is very readable. Compare that to looking inside a C++ standard library: It's not impossible, but it's of a completely different nature of normal C++ we might write for a business.

[brnt]

> Compare that to looking inside a C++ standard library: It's not impossible, but it's of a completely different nature of normal C++ we might write for a business.

C++ isn't a language, it's a script. Like Latin, it can be used to express English, Polish and Indonesian.

[klausa]

Latin can't be used to express Polish; at least not without extra letters, at which point I think it ceases to be "just" Latin script?

But maybe that was also your point.

[IsTom]

> at which point I think it ceases to be "just" Latin script?

I draw my line at 'U'.

[tardedmeme]

When the testing is over, 'U' will be... missed.

[mejutoco]

I like this metaphor.

Spanish ñ, Catalan or French ç, German ß. Similarly for ł and other Polish letters. It seems strictly speaking the latin alphabet cannot cover many european languages. But mostly we can say latin can express that. You can write "ss" for German and l for Polish, etc, so it can definitely be used. Source: whatssap messages.

[anthk]

Spanish: 'ny' as a digraph. Accented vowels (stress marks) and ü -> 'a 'e 'i 'o 'u and maybe :u.

[mejutoco]

It seems we agree that the latin alphabet can represent these for Polish, Spanish, etc.

[PapstJL4U]

"ss" is a different sound in German.

Trasse (line/ train path) vs Straße (street)

[mejutoco]

Still, when ß is not available one can use ss to represent it. Same with l and ł etc

[brnt]

Like Latin, C++98 was just a v1. By the way, what we call Latin now is already an evolved version, slightly tweaked from what Romans used. And before that, Latin itself was derived.

My point is that C++ lets you write in very different languages (or dialects your analogy if preference is) that at times appear barely related.

[nl]

> Maybe some madman that could explain the initial implementation of the Calendar classes.

java.util.Date (which was all there was until I think Java 1.3?) was truly terrible and apparently was written by an intern at Sun.

java.util.Calendar was a mess and horrible to use but mostly correct.