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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++

#231

Post by ChadNauseam »

woodruffw wrote: post #222
hgs3 wrote: post #211

I tried Rust about five years ago and I had trouble expressing cyclic data structures because there is no clear "owner" in a cyclic data structure. The "safe" solution recommended by the rustaceans was to use integers as references to the data in a vec or hashmap. I was rather put off by this: Instead of juggling pointers I was juggling integers. It made the code harder to debug and find logic errors. At least when I…

If the last time you tried it was 5 years ago, then you probably didn't experience Rust with non-lexical lifetimes. That was added in around 2018 (IIRC), and radically increased the number of programs that the borrow checker accepted. That being said, you still can't do "naive" cyclical data structures without some additional assistance. But the ecosystem has matured around that: crates like ouroboros[1] provide safe…

Ghost-cell [0] also lets you create a doubly-linked lists (without you having to use unsafe code, and with no overhead)

[0]: https://crates.io/crates/ghost-cell

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

#233

Post by woodruffw »

ekianjo wrote: post #192
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

Appeal to authority?

We do indeed listen to what authorities on subjects have to say, yes. Mark Russinovich is an authority on systems programming, and his thoughts carry weight because of his track record.

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

#234

Post by adamnemecek »

hgs3 wrote: post #211

I tried Rust about five years ago and I had trouble expressing cyclic data structures because there is no clear "owner" in a cyclic data structure. The "safe" solution recommended by the rustaceans was to use integers as references to the data in a vec or hashmap. I was rather put off by this: Instead of juggling pointers I was juggling integers. It made the code harder to debug and find logic errors. At least when I…

Use generational arenas.

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

#235

Post by dtornabene »

userbinator wrote: post #197
woodruffw wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

His "opinion" is not only reflective, but amplifying, and that's the scary part. The companies are the ones pushing this "security" stuff, because they want to stop us from doing things like jailbreaking --- and eventually running any software they don't approve of. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32905587 He used to write very useful utilities which did things that Microsoft didn't officially support or oth…

bizarre. not even sure what that linked comment is supposed to do for your argument here. The idea that rust is some plot by "companies" to "prevent jailbreaking" is ..... rough, man.

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

#236

Post by chocolatemario »

bitL wrote: post #109
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.…

Dunno. Young devs can pick basic Rust constructs fast but when it comes to complicated stuff where performance is critical... There must be raw talent and lot of grind. IMO it's easier to write super complex stuff in C++ than in Rust as there are just too many cognitive things to keep in mind in Rust to even compile. C++ for talented folks makes life easier there. Like JavaScript, yet another language written for bad…

When you say JavaScript, do you mean java? Rust undoubtedly raises the floor which is great, but designing scalable systems that enable new members to ramp up is a timeless skill independent of language.

As someone who isn’t a rust native but an interested outsider, it can obviously be cumbersome to use on my pet projects compared to something like python, js, c# or C. Dealing with references to generically types traits adds a lot of syntactical burden (re: shit for me to type) and defining types and their implementations leaves something to be desired regarding its grammars.

That being said, my toy programs do not require particularly complex types and the rust compiler is nothing short of a brilliant. The book is a surprisingly easy read, the module system is fine, cargo is decent out of the box, and there is an interesting mix of paradigms in the language itself. In my mind, the power of the compiler is certainly the big feature of rust and that compilers input language is decent enough such that I wouldn’t dislike using it as a daily driver.

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

#237

Post by stackbutterflow »

sseagull wrote: post #165
tester756 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd pick Rust over "modern" C++ just because I don't have to deal with 15 compilers, 15 IDEs, 15 build systems, decades of language experiments, kind of compiler-flags driven development

Give rust a few decades and it will get there. Remember when python was simple? And you just had setuptools? Popularity breeds complexity and fragmentation.

Sure. In the meantime that's a few decades of better developer experience.

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

#238

Post by weatherlite »

px43 wrote: post #206
a-dub wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

absolutely! came here to say just that. also the excellent book "windows internals", which is kind of like the bsd red book, or the magic garden svr4 book, but for systems derived from the windows nt kernel. but perhaps his best work is this: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/blu... a screensaver that produces a realistic blue screen (kernel panic) for the version of the operating system and ke…

Also IMO it's best to avoid his fiction books, Zero Day etc. It's been about a decade since I read it, but it was the first book I've ever read where I felt uncomfortable with the level of detail the author went to when describing the breasts of every female character. The random awkward sex scenes thrown in for no reason was a weird choice. Most importantly, there's also a complete lack of understanding of the under…

People like breasts and random sex scenes though, see Game Of Thrones. He was trying to write for the average person I guess....

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

#239

Post by junofan »

ajross wrote: post #223
hgs3 wrote: post #211

I tried Rust about five years ago and I had trouble expressing cyclic data structures because there is no clear "owner" in a cyclic data structure. The "safe" solution recommended by the rustaceans was to use integers as references to the data in a vec or hashmap. I was rather put off by this: Instead of juggling pointers I was juggling integers. It made the code harder to debug and find logic errors. At least when I…

That's my take too. Idiomatic Rust is "safe" in the sense that... it disallows most nontrivial data structures. Even a doubly-linked list is impossible to get through the borrow checker. That's... not really that fatal. There's a lot of very useful code that can be written using only runtime-provided[1] containers and straightforward ownership trees. But obviously the big problem is that for applications that do need…

Agreed, having touched browser development circa Rust’s invention, I think there are some good ideas, but the execution fell flat over the years, orthogonality broke, and thus the utility is kind of limited. I’m more excited about some newer languages to be honest.

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

#240

Post by AtlasBarfed »

everyone wrote: post #215
diego_moita wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, little by little, C++ became "unlearnable". Long ago C++ made C a little bit more complex. Because there were already lots of C programmers that wasn't a big deal. But then it didn't stop. Little by little C++ grew into a monstrosity. A lot of people went along. I gave up. For new programmers to climb in 2-3 years a mountain that seasoned programmers took 15-20 years to climb is asking too much.

Just cus they add a feature to a language doesnt mean u have to use it. Though it does seem very few programmers are smart enough to stick to the most basic features whenever possible.

C++ the "language culture" unfortunately has a lot of gatekeeping as well. The fact that the gatekeeping generally revolves around "replace feature from n-5 years with the newer feature in the latest 0x00x release" is a bit tiresome.

Yes, I'm exaggerating, a bit.

As for the Microsoft whomever-he-is: I agree in theory, I disagree in practice. If there are a lot of C++ devs writing important code, then let them continue to do so in their prime language that they've invested decades of hard work keeping up with the feature treadmill. New devs? Only if you have to.

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