"If I wanted to fry my brain trying to figure out how to add two numbers with templates I'd go use LISP."
Probably just a tongue in cheek comment, but I wonder what he meant.
Zed Shaw on C++
21–30 of 210 posts
Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
"There appear to be a lot of good rants against C++....Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?" By definition, the people who write the "entertaining" rants against C++ have an axe to grind. The people who like C++ just silently use it , and feel no need to write advocacy blog posts for the language. Even if they were to blog about it, it would be about as compelling as someone advocating for their…
> You remember that Zed Shaw couldn't figure out how const works in C++, and once wrote a funny email about it. source?
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Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#23Zed is literally the Kimbo Slice of the technical community.
Wow, an MMA analogy on this site? Who are Seth Petruzelli, Roy Nelson, and Matt Mitrione then?
Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#24There appear to be a lot of good rants against C++. To name a few: * Linus Torvalds : http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/ * C++ Frequently Questioned Answers : http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?
"There appear to be a lot of good rants against C++....Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?" By definition, the people who write the "entertaining" rants against C++ have an axe to grind. The people who like C++ just silently use it , and feel no need to write advocacy blog posts for the language. Even if they were to blog about it, it would be about as compelling as someone advocating for their…
Good advice generally, but what axes do Zed and Linus have to grind? Sounds like both just think C++ enables too much complexity to be worth the benefits.
Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
"There appear to be a lot of good rants against C++....Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?" By definition, the people who write the "entertaining" rants against C++ have an axe to grind. The people who like C++ just silently use it , and feel no need to write advocacy blog posts for the language. Even if they were to blog about it, it would be about as compelling as someone advocating for their…
> You remember that Zed Shaw couldn't figure out how const works in C++, and once wrote a funny email about it. source?
Uh...I'm talking about the content of the post to which this thread is attached, so:
http://librelist.com/browser//mongrel2/2010/7/15/c-verses-c+...
Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#26There appear to be a lot of good rants against C++. To name a few: * Linus Torvalds : http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/ * C++ Frequently Questioned Answers : http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?
It has grabbed and maintained complete domination of nearly all performance sensitive code in games and desktop software, for nearly a generation now which is an unprecedented reign in computing history. That's a pretty good start to me.
Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You remember that Zed Shaw couldn't figure out how const works in C++, and once wrote a funny email about it. source?
Uh...I'm talking about the content of the post to which this thread is attached, so: http://librelist.com/browser//mongrel2/2010/7/15/c-verses-c+...
"You'll find crap in C++ like const *const char &, and hell if anyone knows what that really means since even though the pointer to a const to a const reference is consted to hell and back, oh look you can still increment it."
I'm still looking for the part where he doesn't understand how const _works_.
Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#28I really dislike C++ but more to the point I really dislike other people's C++. This is triple compounded when you only have to do C++ occasionally. I've never even got close to the point of looking at something like const *const char & and reading it like it was something normal like others seem to do.
I really dislike C++ but more to the point I really dislike other people's C++.
That's right on the money. I can find a subset of C++ that I like and that I could program with, but that assumes that I'm not collaborating with someone and that I don't have to use C++ libraries (It's not just the code, it's the APIs, too). The latter is almost worse. I could imagine a company that has some rather strict standards, where the C++ development environment doesn't suck completely. Google's style guide seems to indicate that they might be one of those companies [1]. Much more likely you'd have to work with something like MFC, VLC or the complete boost hodgepodge.
And Zed is right when he's talking about the template meta-programming fad. I haven't seen any project where the pros outweighed the cons. And yes, I've read Alexandrescu.
People often say that you need all those features to build large applications. Which reminds me a lot of the "Doctor, it hurts when I do like this!" joke…
[1]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x...
Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#29"They'd have been better off to just invent a new keyword:
doesnotfuckingchange and stop there."
And now I have tea to clean off of my monitor and keyboard.
Re: Zed Shaw on C++
#30There appear to be a lot of good rants against C++. To name a few: * Linus Torvalds : http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/ * C++ Frequently Questioned Answers : http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/ Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?
"There appear to be a lot of good rants against C++....Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?" By definition, the people who write the "entertaining" rants against C++ have an axe to grind. The people who like C++ just silently use it , and feel no need to write advocacy blog posts for the language. Even if they were to blog about it, it would be about as compelling as someone advocating for their…
For some concrete examples of the above: WebKit, Chromium, Gecko, and V8 are all C++.
My impression is that there is a very high startup cost with C++ to getting it working on the platforms you want to support and picking the subset that isn't going to screw you. Once you get over the hurdle, the improved memory management (I agree with the post Zed is ranting in response to) starts to pay dividends.