It's time to halt starting any new projects in C/C++ • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by snickerbockers » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:18 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #233

ekianjo wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yeah, but he's not an authority on everything written in C/C++. He's entitled to his own opinions, but this scope exceeds whatever experience he has doing sysinternals or whatever it was (idk, i'm a unix guy not a windows guy). He definitely can be criticized and disagreed with.

Where does it end? If he says mint chocolate chip is the worst ice cream flavor, am I obliged to agree with him because he made sysinternals?

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

#242

Post by ninefathom » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:19 AM UTC

There are new programs being written daily in COBOL and Fortran, and I'm fairly certain that I see new PL/I floating around occasionally.

C and C++ aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Love them, hate them, want to burn them with fire, they're here for a long, long time.

Leaving that aside, I was still hitting Rust "oh look the developer of this crate on which the entire universe depends still assumes that everything is x86, and one of five operating systems" issues as recently as late 2021. Rusties of the world: your language might be ready to take up the mantle of C- it's you and your ecosystem that I question.

If Rusties want Rust to displace C... simplify your dependency chains. Get a build system that's easily workable without an Internet connection and recent TLS support. Make it easy for beginners to build out Rust infrastructure for OpenVMS on Itanium, Solaris on SPARC, z/OS, MorphOS, GNU/Hurd, and a 20-year-old budget PDA running a custom OS on an SH4 CPU. Make it feasible to get Rust everywhere that C currently is... then we'll discuss getting rid of C. Until then it's just wind.

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

#243

Post by snickerbockers » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

Speaking of Microsoft, it's time to halt starting any new projects in Windows and use Linux for those scenarios where an OS kernel is required. For the sake of security and reliability. the industry should declare that OS as deprecated.

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

#244

Post by omnibrain » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

a-dub wrote: post #47

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

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…

> a screensaver that produces a realistic blue screen (kernel panic) for the version of the operating system and kernel that are installed

I used this one at work for some time. Until I came back from my lunch break and got told by my office mate that he helpfully rebooted my PC because it had crashed in my absence.

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

#245

Post by stormbrew » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:20 AM UTC

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…

> 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.

It keeps you from compiling (many of) the bugs you'll happily write and deploy in C++. I don't think there's really much practical difference in "cognitive load" between modern C++ (which is painfully complex in ways that are largely not even useful) and rust. C++ just lets you pretend it's lower and you ship more bugs.

Imo, writing rust is like the best parts of writing C++ with a stern but helpful assistant.

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

#246

Post by mempko » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:21 AM UTC

Compare Stepanov's brilliant design of the STL to Rust's current reworking of their 'binary search api'. https://github.com/rust-lang/libs-team/issues/81

Maybe 'memory safety' isn't the most important thing in this world. To me, writing software that does useful things in the simplest and most correct way is what matters. I get the feeling it's harder to understand my program's correctness with Rust (I mean algorithmic correctness). The C++ standard library has time and space complexity for every algorithm. I'm not seeing that's the case with Rust (correct me if I'm wrong).

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

#247

Post by atomicnumber3 » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

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.

One problem here is that everyone ends up with their own little niches of the language that they like, and nobody's code looks like anyone else's, and suddenly to read a codebase you do need to know huge swathes of the sprawling language.

At lastjob, we did a lot of C++, and I could tell whose code I was reading without checking blame because I knew who liked what idioms and features.

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

#248

Post by dleslie » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:23 AM UTC

bcrosby95 wrote: post #146

jimbob45 wrote: post #50

I don’t feel that his opinion is all-encompassing. If Rust is being used in the name of security and reliability, then C/C++ should remain king of game development, where those two aren’t as important.

I've always wondered, why isn't it important here? Are security researchers just not looking? Especially for networked games.

Game developers generally persist hand to mouth. Rust isn't popular with us simply because there isn't a Unity or Unreal that offers Rust as a first class offering, and so it's up to the rare few who are interested in building engines from bare to build a new one.

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

#249

Post by ransom1538 » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:24 AM UTC

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.…

You can find good C++ devs, if ySegmentation fault.

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

#250

Post by woodruffw » Tue, Sep 20, 2022, 4:25 AM UTC

snickerbockers wrote: post #241

woodruffw wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yeah, but he's not an authority on everything written in C/C++. He's entitled to his own opinions, but this scope exceeds whatever experience he has doing sysinternals or whatever it was (idk, i'm a unix guy not a windows guy). He definitely can be criticized and disagreed with. Where does it end? If he says mint chocolate chip is the worst ice cream flavor, am I obliged to agree with him because he made sysinternals…

It should be extremely obvious that you should not jump off of a bridge because he (or anyone else) tells you to.

He’s an expert in the subject at hand, and that fact is more relevant than the fact that he’s the Azure CTO. What more do you want?

(And yes, of course you can disagree with him. That has never been doubted.)