The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

Post by pencilguin » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 5:54 AM UTC

ayberk wrote: post #413

rychco wrote: post #209

I’ll offer a perspective unrelated to pay: It’s a pain to start learning C++, and even after you do, older devs will roast the hell out of your code because your book/tutorials of choice forgot to mention a crucial (in their opinion) feature that you absolutely should/shouldn’t use! Not to mention you’ve only programmed on Mac/Linux so far & windows is totally different, has a different compiler, different ways to in…

As someone who has been writing C++ at Google, this exactly. Despite all the tooling, guidelines and "internal magic", C++ is still an abomination. And no it has nothing to do with memory management, I actually do like C. I love how Eric Raymond describes it as "anti-compact", because, well, it really is. C++ as a whole should be deprecated -- and no new projects should use C++ (unless for some very odd and specific…

Post by astrange » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 7:20 AM UTC

shaklee3 wrote: post #756

astrange wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. because it is greppable and unsafe But it is not unsafe, or rather, the C++ casts aren't more safe. They have the same semantics. There are differences casting between class types, but with numeric types the issues are how to handle the value not fitting in (or being imprecise) in the destination type. Casting a value to int in C++ that overflows is still UB. It doesn't fix C's other strange numeric issues eithe…

they are unsafe because if you try to cast something that's not valid the compiler won't let you. you can then choose to ignore it and be unsafe, or figure out the problem and fix it.

Post by jleahy » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 7:40 AM UTC

generichuman wrote: post #709

jleahy wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try doing (serious) high frequency trading in rust, then come back to me.

Jane Street is doing it in Ocaml (which is pretty similar to Rust + GC) and they seem to be pretty serious. Are you working at a more "serious" company where they only use languages with the safety level of Assembly?

Post by Teever » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 7:45 AM UTC

pencilguin wrote: post #762

timbit42 wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of reasons to keep using C++ on existing projects in C++ but there are not many reasons to choose C++ for a new project.

This is exactly equivalent to saying that all existing C++ coders should be demoted or fired. It is, among worse things, damned rude.

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Nov 03, 2022, 8:21 AM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #752

smackeyacky wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true. I started C++ using the 'cfront' system, the major push wasn't because C was somehow lacking, it was because it was fashionable to do object orient programming which is hard in C. Various horrible patterns were invented using function pointers so C programmers could feel like they were doing object oriented programming and all of them sucked. When cfront turned up, the first versions basica…

Yes, OOP kind of sucks. But you can use C++ without OOP if you so wish. C# is much better but still it isn't a systems programming language due to garbage collection. So while you can solve some classes of problems easier and better, it can't replace all of C++ use cases.