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Quote:In class driven languages like C++/C#, the cost of initializing an object of a class can be expensive, if the class describes very complex objects

For C++ in particular, you don't pay for what you don't use. So feel free to declare as many stack allocated variables as you wish.
Even more, C++ is free to not allocate structure it doesn't need. Compiler is perfectly capable of analyzing what causes side-effects and what doesn't. As such, the cost of unused objects is zero and trivial objects may be only partially constructed. Example:

void foo(const Message & m) {  print(m.c);};struct Message { int a, b, c, d; };...Message msg;msg.a = 10;msg.b = 20;msg.c = 30;msg.d = 40;foo(msg);// Compiles intoprint(30);// compiler is clever enough to know there are no side-effects

class big_class{...};function(int u){    big_class a, b, c;    a = c;    if(u) return;    c = b;    if(u == 42) return;    b = a;}

Quote:Original post by Bregma
Also, note that FORTRAN, in first production use in 1952, allowed variable to be declared at first use anywhere in the body of code, just like with C++ (FORTRAN did not, in fact, allow you to declare variables separately from first use until, what, Fortran 77?).

Quote:Original post by Falling Sky
Why dont people follow that style of separating the two any more?

Quote:Why did people originally separate them?