What languages have higher levels of abstraction and require less manual memory management than C++?

Question

I have been learning C++ for a while now, I find it very powerful. But, the problem is the the level of abstraction is not much and I have to do memory management myself. What are the languages that I can use which uses a higher level of abstraction.

Answer 1

Java, C#, Ruby, Python and JavaScript are probably the big choices before you.

Java and C# are not hugely different languages. This big difference you'll find from C++ is memory management (i.e. objects are automatically freed when they are no longer referenced). You would chose these if you were interested in desktop style applications, or keen on static typing (and you'd probably choose between them based on how you feel towards Microsoft and the Windows platform). In both cases you'll find much richer standard libraries than you'll be used to from C++.

Python and Ruby take a step away from static typing, into a world where you can call and method on any object (and fail at runtime if it's not there). That is both a blessing (a lot less boilerplate code) and a curse (the compiler can't catch those errors for you anymore). Once again, you'll find they have richer standard libraries, and are higer level again than Java / C#. Performance is the main downfall, with Python being somewhat faster than Ruby as I understand it. To choose between them, you'd probably choose Ruby if you're interesting in web development for the Ruby on Rails framework community, and otherwise go with Python.

JavaScript is even more different from C++ in that it does away with classes entirely. Objects are simply cloned from other objects and can have methods and properties added to them at runtime. Very flexible, but also very easy to make into a total mess. JavaScript is the only real choice if you're interested in running applications in a browser, which is really coming into its own as a platform. You'll find the standard libraries available rather limited if you're not doing a lot with the browser, but there are quite a few good frameworks which fill in some of the gaps.

Some other interesting, though more niche choices are

• Smalltalk - More or less in the Ruby and Python camp, and significantly faster as I understand it. Be careful though _ I've seen lots of good engineers learn Smalltalk and never come back ;)
• Objective-C - When C went object oriented, C++ went one way (static typing), and Objective-C went the other (dynamic typing). It's quite Smalltalk inspired, and has a good standard library if you're in Mac / iPhone land. In terms of memory management, unlike everything else I've listed, it's not garbage collected (though that's now an option on Mac OS X 10.5), but it does have a reference counting scheme which makes life significantly simpler than managing memory by hand.
• Lisp - I've never learnt it myself beyond what I needed for minor Emacs hacking. As I understand it, the libraries were nice in their day, but though the language remains supremely elegant, they've fallen a little behind the times.
• Haskel - If you wanted a complete break from objects and classes, Haskel and it's functional approach is an interesting way to go (or Lisp as above, or F# if you are in .Net land). Basically, you're giving up loops and variables in favour of doing everything recursively. Takes some time to wrap your mind around, and probably isn't practical for most real world applications, but it's a good one to learn.
• Eiffel - I love it - Very clean syntax, and designed for serious engineering type systems. Statically types like C# and Java, and with a weaker standard library, but it will make you really think about language and class library design.
• ActionScript and Flex - The programming interface to Flash, which is based on what seems to be a statically typed version of JavaScript. I've played with it a bit, and it's quite slick if you're interested in developing media based applications. You can also push beyond the browser with Flex and into the Air platform to build real desktop apps.

Answer 2

I would say that from your question you probably haven't finished learning about C++. If you're still doing your own memory managment then you still have a long way to go my friend!

Check out the auto_ptr and shared_ptr - check out the Boost libraries.

Similarly with abstraction - what are you specifically complaining about? AFAIK there's not much you can't do with C++ that is present in other strongly-typed languages.

I know this doesn't answer your question - you want to move forwards, but C++ is one of those things where you never really stop learning. If you get bored, take a brief foray into templates and template meta-programming...