Old G++ version unacceptable

[suman]

Hi,
I am posting this message hoping that you may return to see it. However would you please tell me which C++ feature you expected but not in g++? As far as I know the compiler is gcc2.7 (or later). My experience tell me that most of the C++ features is best implemented in borland C++, then gcc then vc++6. But there are workarounds to solve the problems. And no problem here requires such "new" features of C++. So before leaving you should give a thought. I think the huge effort here can't be judged properly by a two or three hour practice. I am stuck here for 3 years . Best of luck where ever you go.

- Suman

[Yarin]

Also, I'm not sure you would want to use more advanced C++ features anyway, as I believe they will be unnecessarily slow because the compile with optimizations turned off. There are for instance several problems at UVA where you will time out if you use STL vector (without actually using the dynamic reallocation!) instead of a C array as accessing elements in a vector turns into a function call, which seems to be about twice as slow (with optimization turned on, it takes the same amount of time).

[Jordan Gordeev]

'Old C++ compiler unacceptable' and 'Compilation with optimization turned off unaccepteble' are two quite different things.
I don't like the lack of optimization, but I understand the administrators, as they have only one computer to run a web server, mail server, to compile solutions and to run them.
If you have money which you do not need, I think admins will be happy to recieve a new computer (for compiling with optimisations) as a Christmas gift.

[Rodrigo]

Give it a shot, there are a lot of really interesting problems.

[Yarin]

If they cannot afford the extra cpu/memory resources that optimization requires, then they should put a warning about this on the frontpage, so that more experienced C++ users would know this problem-archive is not worth getting involved in.

I agree it might be appropriate with better information about they not using optimization, but I think you're definately being a bit harsh here. Problem solving (which is what this site is about) does NOT require advanced C++ feature. In fact, it's probably illogical to use more advanced C++ features (can anyone point out to me a problem where you really gain from using more advanced C++ which won't work in the current G++ version?).

Almost all problems I've solved (which is more than most) I've done in ANSI C because there's simply no need (ie the solution would not get shorter, faster nor faster to write) to use C++. In some problems it really helps to use map/set, string, overloading of operators and then I use C++.

So your comments about "not worth getting into" is just not only wrong, it's stupid and foolish as well.