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It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

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Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#181

Post by ncmncm »

woodruffw wrote: post #166
ncmncm wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe he thinks Azure should standardize on one of Go/Rust, Java/C#, or Haskell/OCaml for managing its hosting service. He is apparently in a position to enforce his opinion on the division. It is hard to know how anybody outside will be able to tell which he has chosen without his announcing it: "Azure has designated Haskell/Ocaml as its preferred language for hosting management utilities." Microsoft is no stranger…

What does this have to do with your grandparent comment?

It makes as much sense to talk about a language named "Haskell/Ocaml" as about "C/C++".

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#182

Post by andrewmcwatters »

I wish technical people would stop pretending that choice of programming language isn't just largely very much a personal choice and then occasionally based on whatever else the ecosystem has to offer.

Yeah, most people doing scientific computing might use Python, but then you have whole groups of people who are used to something else and would plainly prefer not to use a language for completely personal reasons.

Like, hey maybe the syntax sucks.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#183

Post by cmeacham98 »

cutierust wrote: post #32
paranoidrobot wrote: post #6

I think this title could be misinterpreted. There is a difference between Mark Russinovich saying this, as a personal opinion, and Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO, saying this as a company policy/directive. This tweet does not indicate that it's from him in his official capacity as Azure CTO.

I don't want to sound too girle or fanboyish but there is no other way to say it so I'll say it (hopefully he won't read this)- Mark Russinovich transcends titles and if he's said something about technology, it's probably 99.999% true. Also, RITF, I love Rust but remember zig exists so chill I also want to say one thing-- sometimes it's not so easy to just decide to write a project and say okay let me write this in R…

The point is that if he was saying it as CTO that would presumably mean Azure is (or will soon) stop starting C/C++ projects.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#184

Post by foomatic »

ReactiveJelly wrote: post #76

Someone else downthread: "young developers can pick up Rust quite fast, and that makes it vastly easier than trying to find talented C/C++ developers." I hope so. I have a hypothesis that the big-O for language success is "How easily can new programmers learn it?" Nothing else matter. JavaScript was slow, but everyone learned it, so it got fast. Python still had bad tooling, but everyone learned it, so it got better.…

Why not just hire good people and ask them to learn C++. I mean how the heck did anyone actually pass this magic barrier of becoming a "C++ dev" in order to get hired as a C++ dev?

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#185

Post by woodruffw »

userbinator wrote: post #177
woodruffw wrote: post #11

Calling him the Azure CTO is strictly accurate, but HN readers probably know Mark Russinovich better as one of the primary developers of sysinternals[1]. I bring that up to highlight the weight of his opinion: Russinovich is legendary in terms of his systems programming contributions. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysinternals

Quoted post unavailable.

Hm? I'm not a particular fan of Microsoft, but his stated opinion here is reflective of a broader trend in software design, one that's coming from both companies and the open source community. I don't see the brainwashing.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#186

Post by pessimizer »

woodruffw wrote: post #11

Calling him the Azure CTO is strictly accurate, but HN readers probably know Mark Russinovich better as one of the primary developers of sysinternals[1]. I bring that up to highlight the weight of his opinion: Russinovich is legendary in terms of his systems programming contributions. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysinternals

Very very rarely in my life do I feel affectionate towards Windows (and I've been virtually exclusively Linux/other-unix for a long time.) Sometimes it happened when I was writing dumb VBA in some Excel project, which I find fun for some reason. It happens when I play Windows 95/XP era Minesweeper. It also happens when I touch or have to use any part of Sysinternals. I even like reading the docs for Sysinternals, even though the UI is usually so good you hardly need them.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#187

Post by gpm »

llanowarelves wrote: post #42
gpm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the main thing that can be done in python is calling all the libraries that have been written for python. Can't do that from JS.

The big stuff is mostly done in C/C++ (because Python is slow) and bound to, so you could end up with basically the same bindings for JS/TS.

I've tried using both tensorflow and pytorch via their C/C++ apis. It's possible, but just enough of the convenience logic is in python that it's not very practical.

Incidentally if you're going to do it, I recommend pytorch over tensorflow.

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#188

Post by imron »

kllrnohj wrote: post #136
synergy20 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

carbon, and the newly announced alpha stage efforts called cppfront, can potentially act as a "typescript" for c++, new compiler can enforce memory safety at an upper layer before they're converted to c++, maybe there is hope for c/c++ code for years to come as long as they keep fixing issues along the way.

Is anyone attempting to do the same with C though? Carbon & cppfront, if successful, would only "save" C++. C would still be left out to dry. Then again, the C committee is also pretty much phoning it in and has been for quite a while now.

> Is anyone attempting to do the same with C though?

Absolutely. In fact cfront preceded cppfront by many years ;-)

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#189

Post by synergy20 »

ghoward wrote: post #135

Unless he means that Rust should be used on projects where the Rust compiler is available for all relevant platforms and C and C++ can be used otherwise, I disagree. In fact, until LLVM is replaced, C++ will probably be the language of choice for new languages. Even `rustc` requires a C++ bootstrap for that purpose. There are also other important C++ and C libraries that will continue to mean C and C++ may be better…

"Oh, and it's possible to make C as good as Rust", do you have some concrete advice documented somewhere? Thanks!

Re: It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++

#190

Post by woodruffw »

ncmncm wrote: post #181
woodruffw wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with your grandparent comment?

It makes as much sense to talk about a language named "Haskell/Ocaml" as about "C/C++".

Nobody is talking about one language named "C/C++". It's a shorthand for two languages that are closely related at the abstract machine level, and in terms of co-existing compiler frontends.
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