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Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

izzys.casa

211–220 of 251 posts

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#211

The author seems depressed and is displacing their frustrations onto a programming language. A programming language isn't going to bring you real joy, that can only come from within.

Rule Number One: The ISO C++ Standard Working Group is not the source of your life dissatisfaction. Neither is your current choice of programming language (unless it's Java).

The WG isn't even one group. It is just a lot of people drawn together to work on what will end up one thing, the next Standard. And then another. Any impression of coherency is illusory.

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#212
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, according to you at what point was Java considered C++ 2.0?

At inception it was sold as an alternative to C++ for general IT work. I switched in ‘96.

Java was sold as a ticket off of the Microsoft sharecropping treadmill. It largely succeeded at that, so much so that Microsoft ended up obliged to clone it. (The joke is on users of that: Worst of both worlds!)

Java needed no other selling points, and had none. But there is enough money around it, since, to generate them, howsoever fitfully.

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#213
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on now, you can't really believe that someone who "just couldn’t let something go because it was wrong or incorrect and it bothered" them - would have failed to live in and deal with society 30 years ago.

For some definition of failure. Ever read a really old book - something from the 1800s? Ever listen to your old family stories? There are many variations of "Larry, he never leaves the farm". We have no idea what might be wrong with Larry, but it is clear there must have been a lot of people who failed to fit into society. We also know that are variations, in some cases Larry would leave the farm but only for specifi…

Actually, we are living through the peak of social penalization of non-conformity.

In days of old, there was an implicit high tolerance for low intelligence and reduced social ability, since communities ware small, lives were short and violent and strong family support was essential for survival. Nobody cared if Larry can befriend a stranger passing through the village, as long as he could work the fields and provide. Only comparatively rare conditions such as schizophrenia or severe autism would lead to ostracization - the proverbial village idiot.

The Larrys of today are many and can be marginalized for minor issues. A low achievement student can be removed from their class and left back, leading to a vicious cycle of depression and economic exclusion. A functional autist has major problems in the modern workplace and the dating scene, leading to hikikomori individuals.

So while the treatment options improved, the bar for what constitutes a well integrated, functioning adult raised even more, without diminishing the stigma for illness.

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure we will. Just like we switched to C++ 2.0 aka Java.

I keep waiting for the announcement that some propeller-head has implement the Rust borrow checker as a template metaprogram, with the caveat that nothing larger than "Hello, world." compiles within a month.

You'd probably be happy with the people doing constexpr shenanigans. A whole bunch of terrible behaviour in C++ is defined away during constexpr expansion (e.g. since none of this is really happening at runtime you can't very well have "undefined behaviour" when there is no behaviour at all) so if you can find a way to write everything as constexpr you get a much "safer" language. e.g. buffers don't really exist, so therefore buffer overflows don't compile.

There are a LOT of caveats when people take this beyond trivial, not least that the compiler diagnostics are mostly useless because the compiler often isn't sure exactly why what you're doing is nonsense, only that it is nonsense. Hey, it wouldn't even have told you that the code was nonsense if it wasn't constexpr - it would just spit out a program that's also nonsense, so that's a win right?

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#215

It's great to hear that the author got a diagnosis for their condition (I hope that "condition" is not too unsuitable a word). I'm not very familiar with such things, but I can imagine that could be an important first step to understand and mitigate it. But it seems to me that they're still some way off from understanding their condition. They characterise it as having "extremely high standards" or not being able to…

Do you really think your incredibly arrogant and condescending comment adds anything to the debate?

I encourage you to try and consider the author's points instead of simply attacking her character.

I'll be there if you need help with that.

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#216
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak to their well-known-ness or influence, but they're definitely one of my favorite cppcon speakers[0] The community is lessened by their departure [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7THzO-D0ta4

Maybe Strousoup was showing disgust at the words written on the t-shirt?

That video's from 2017, the snub was 2015.

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#217
post #205
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>inappropriate sexist If this was internal Google communication as it sounds then you should go to HR about sexist communication, if that doesn't get results then go to the victim and encourage a lawsuit against the company

Hint: HR is not your friend. HR's primary job, overriding all its other jobs, is to spy on you on behalf of corporate. Second is to save the company money on lawsuit payouts. The only saving grace is that, sometimes, a low-level HR functionary has not got the memo that this is their primary job, and might actually do something helpful. The primary job of the Director of HR, an the other hand, is always simple corrupt…

Seriously worth repeating. HR is NOT your friend. I learnt this the hard way.

HR's core function is to protect the company from litigation by employees. The HR management is highly unlikely to side with you against upper management no matter how much you are in the right.

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#218
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At inception it was sold as an alternative to C++ for general IT work. I switched in ‘96.

Java was also largely successful, by now it's the new Cobol of business software and will never go away. The same for C++, of course, it will not go anywhere, at worst it will slide a few points down the TIOBE index (where, surprisingly, Visual Basic is on place 6).

I believe that - without any of them explicitly saying so and perhaps even without them consciously understanding what they were doing - the C++ 20 standards committee actually settled on C++ priorities and set backwards compatibility as inviolable priority #1.

It won't go anywhere. But that's including forwards.

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#219

I sincerely hope that the author finds joy. Great things come from those unwilling to settle. But the Kubernetes riff was telling: when using a cloud provider, so much of the system management is provided. When we insist on DIY, we get to DIY. So maybe settling a bit here and there isn't catastrophic.

> But the Kubernetes riff was telling: when using a cloud provider, so much of the sustem management is provided. Way too much for most usecases out there. And if you don't understand it, you can't fix it when it breaks.

My point exactly. I qualitatively explain that "a virtual private 'cloud'" is essentially the old datacenter, and all its components. When we say K8s, it is a "puff", and we get to own all the complexity we put on the cloud provider.

Probably there are some ninjas at the FANG companies who are savvy enough to keep their system fully saturated and maximize the cost/performance ratio of the resources.

My little riff-raff team needs to squeeze the most functionality out of the services at hand and work off technical debt ahead of gettin' all fancy with all this new-fangled stuff.

Re: Wrapping Up 2021. Leaving C++

#220

> I have ... extremely high standards for everything ... it causes me extreme distress ... to have to deal with things that are less efficient ... That's somewhat of a curse when it comes to (most) software engineering, but doubly so for languages like C++ which: 1. Have many decades of baggage (40 + C's baggage from before). 2. Have backwards compatibility and non-breakage as one of their goals. 3. Are not designed…

I agree with the comment, other than that the author is (approximately) a woman, and it's incorrect to refer using "he".
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