Why Was the GObject System Created? [closed]

Question

The Introduction

Okay, so after version 0.60 of GTK+, the designers realized that for future development and progress, the entire toolkit needed to be rewritten to be object-oriented.

Now, since C doesn't support OOP, to provide object-orientation and in inheritance heiriearchies, they created the GObject System. Now creating the GObject System must have required development time, more dependencies, more problems, but they had to create it to provide object orientation capabilities to the C Programming Language. But at that time, there was another solution that provided exactly that, C++!

The Question

Why didn't the developers of GTK+ just use C++?

The Explanation

I mean, Why waste time creating an entire library instead of using a time-tested solution adopted by a lot of projects? Don't get me wrong, I am not trying to turn this post into a C vs C++ thing (I've had enough of that on forums, thank you). I just want to know the reasons and issues that made the designers of GTK+ make the decision they did.

Answer 1

I can't directly answer the question, at least as far as GTK goes. That answer lies with the GTK+ developers, so you'll have to hunt them down and ask them. But as for why one would want to add an object oriented system to C, instead of using C++, there are plenty of reasons. The three I would immediately think of are

1. Language Complexity: While C is a pretty simple language, C++ is mind-numbingly complicated, with support for most (not all) C stuff, as well as conveniences like references, and also object-oriented features and a complex template language. And have you seen the new system of values: lvalues, rvalues, glvalues, prvalues and xvalues - huh? There's plenty more I could talk about. Given time, C++ becomes manageable, but it's still overkill for just wanting some object oriented features in C.

2. Control: If the designers went with C++, they'd be stuck with C++ philosophy. For instance, multiple inheritance is a controversial idea, and for good reason. By design, the GObject system is built to only support single inheritance, which can drastically simplify the inheritance hierarchies. If the designers went with C++, there would be no way to limit users to a single inheritance system. Multiple inheritance is just an example - I'm sure there's plenty of other places in which the GObject system differs from the C++ ideology.

3. Interoperability: This is probably a big one. Although there a few languages with which C++ interoperates cleanly, the fact is that C++ just isn't that great at interop. However, interoperability with C is almost taken for granted. C is often described as the lingua franca of programming languages, since it forms the de facto standard for interop. By designing a C API, the GObject designers opened the door to GTK+ development in any number of languages.