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Starting a tech startup with C++

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Re: Starting a tech startup with C++

#101

Post by srean »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #82
yongjik wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think C++ supports variable length arrays? So, if you want to allocate N objects, where N is not known at compile time, (I think) you have to use heap allocation anyway. Normally I just use vector , and call reserve() if I feel like extra performance-y. Sure, it's much slower than C99-style variable length arrays, but 99% of the time it's still fast enough. More importantly, it plays nice with other C++ funct…

You can still use alloca in C++

Yes and I have at times, but its living a little dangerously. Even if it returns a non-null pointer it does not mean you can write there safely.

Re: Starting a tech startup with C++

#102

Post by melted »

pcwalton wrote: post #99
melted wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How battle tested are those languages? How many outstanding bugs do they have in their compilers and libraries? How good is tooling support? How easy is it to find competent programmers? How well do they interoperate with existing high performance libraries? That's just a small sample of issues you need to consider when starting a serious project. I maintain that it's hard to compete with C/C++ on all of those criter…

Moving the goalposts to "every single advantage C++ might possibly possess" isn't very interesting. The idea that using a new language can only be justified if the language surpasses C++ in every conceivable way is very 1995, pre-PL Renaissance thinking. In reality, you can only choose programming languages by balancing all the factors in question, and C++ has plenty of disadvantages for databases: it's unsafe, it's…

Says someone who has quite obviously never worked on database engines. Package manager? LOL. What language are you programming in, Ruby?

Re: Starting a tech startup with C++

#103

Post by Shorel »

n00b101 wrote: post #35
sgeisenh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is sad. You explained why it is necessary, C++ has been around for a while, is/was great but there are now languages that can compete in terms of performance with fewer drawbacks in terms of security and undefined behavior. If you're starting from scratch, it is important to strongly consider which language and platform best suits your needs. Anecdotally, a lot of companies have found success using n…

> there are now languages that can compete in terms of performance Such as?

D.

Re: Starting a tech startup with C++

#104

Post by tomjakubowski »

melted wrote: post #102
pcwalton wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving the goalposts to "every single advantage C++ might possibly possess" isn't very interesting. The idea that using a new language can only be justified if the language surpasses C++ in every conceivable way is very 1995, pre-PL Renaissance thinking. In reality, you can only choose programming languages by balancing all the factors in question, and C++ has plenty of disadvantages for databases: it's unsafe, it's…

Says someone who has quite obviously never worked on database engines. Package manager? LOL. What language are you programming in, Ruby?

pcwalton works on a web browser engine, which I'd say is at least as "complicated" as a database engine. He's already stated the benefits Cargo brings to Servo's development (as compared to working on, say, Gecko) elsewhere. What makes you think a package manager wouldn't be useful for a database engine which may want to, just as an example, provide a web server for queries or administration? [1][2]

(Honestly, I'd rather call Cargo a "project manager" , because it does far more than manage packages -- it builds your project and its dependencies, too. Having a completely standard way to build applications and libraries is an enormous win over C++. The discovery and management of a project's packaged dependencies is of secondary importance to me.)

[1]: http://docs.basho.com/riak/latest/dev/references/http/ [2]: https://www.rethinkdb.com/docs/administration-tools/

Re: Starting a tech startup with C++

#105

Post by melted »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #104
melted wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says someone who has quite obviously never worked on database engines. Package manager? LOL. What language are you programming in, Ruby?

pcwalton works on a web browser engine, which I'd say is at least as "complicated" as a database engine. He's already stated the benefits Cargo brings to Servo's development (as compared to working on, say, Gecko) elsewhere. What makes you think a package manager wouldn't be useful for a database engine which may want to, just as an example, provide a web server for queries or administration? [1][2] (Honestly, I'd ra…

Compared to DBs browser code bases are lax and buggy beyond belief. Want to take a second and a gig of RAM opening a page? Go right ahead. Browser crashes? We're "sorry", wait for next release 2 weeks from now. No multitenancy. No having to deal with data of arbitrary size. No transactions. No writing anything complicated to disk. Etc, etc. You're comparing things that really require completely different levels of rigor, sophistication and engineering skill. Last I checked, BTW, all currently shipping browsers are written in C++.

Re: Starting a tech startup with C++

#106

Post by pcwalton »

melted wrote: post #105
tomjakubowski wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pcwalton works on a web browser engine, which I'd say is at least as "complicated" as a database engine. He's already stated the benefits Cargo brings to Servo's development (as compared to working on, say, Gecko) elsewhere. What makes you think a package manager wouldn't be useful for a database engine which may want to, just as an example, provide a web server for queries or administration? [1][2] (Honestly, I'd ra…

Compared to DBs browser code bases are lax and buggy beyond belief. Want to take a second and a gig of RAM opening a page? Go right ahead. Browser crashes? We're "sorry", wait for next release 2 weeks from now. No multitenancy. No having to deal with data of arbitrary size. No transactions. No writing anything complicated to disk. Etc, etc. You're comparing things that really require completely different levels of ri…

Browsers certainly do have to deal with multitenancy (although we don't call it by that name), data of arbitrary size, transactions, and complicated on-disk data structures.

In any case, you now seem to be primarily interested in arguing that database programmers are smarter than all other programmers, which, needless to say, is about the most uninteresting conversation we could possibly be having.

Re: Starting a tech startup with C++

#107

Post by JabavuAdams »

ilya1 wrote: post #7

Sounds very inspiring. Any other good places to start learning about C++ 11/14 for complete beginners with JS and other programming languages? I'm very much interested to create proof-of-concept for high performance SaaS services and play with C++ as it might be useful to build Node.js extension later.

Stack Overflow's Definitive C++ Book Collection: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/388242/the-definitive-c-b...
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