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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

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Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#201

Post by tw1984 »

Unless you are in gaming or HFT, setting out to learn C++ in 2023 is a major career limiting factor.

Why would someone burn a sizable chunk of their energy & free time to just entertain those C++ standard committee members sitting on a pile of their RSUs who intentionally delayed almost every single reasonable additions to the language. We are talking about a language that took almost 40 years to get networking support into its standard library! It is a modern museum of bureaucracy in Computer Science.

Some people mentioned the term "modern C++", let's be honest, that is mostly C++11 or C++14, you'd be lucky to get C++17. I won't call 10 years old C++14 modern. Just check where were golang and rust back in 2014 and how much they've changed & created. Modern is the term reserved for languages driven by its user community, like golang, rust, zig etc. New ideas get from open proposals that can be directly commented on by everyone to production in a few quarters, not a few decades.

I mean come on, why would someone with reasonable plan for his/her career choosing to put himself/herself onto that sinking ship called C++?

Let's be clear, learning C++ in 2023 is like migration to Russia/China/Cuba - you give away all your reasonable freedoms & funs to submit yourself to the mercy of a close group of "elites" who try so damn hard to dictate your life & work.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#202

Post by jedberg »

jensensbutton wrote: post #188
jedberg wrote: post #142

There are plenty of talented C++ programmers. They just don't want to be abused by trading firms or work in that culture. Even paying them more won't work, because no amount of money is worth that abuse. I interviewed at a trading firm once, while I was working at Netflix (because Netflix encouraged us to interview for outside jobs at least once a year). The comp would have been double my Netflix salary. But I would…

> It was the fact that I would not be allowed to share my work internally. I would not even be allowed to brainstorm with people doing the same job in other areas of the business. This is what Apple does as well. So not all FAANGs are equal here.

My understanding is that Apple will let you collaborate after what you're working on is public. They just don't want people accidentally sharing unreleased stuff with people who aren't cleared to know about it.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#203

Post by shadykiller »

I started C++ firmware development last year coming from Ruby/Java background. Boy, I was so impressed - completely shattering the previous impression built in my college - 2005 or so. The C++ compiler seems so advanced and lets you do so many things like compile time checks. Built a framework for all our embedded development with thing like compile time checks, type safe abstractions over freertos threads/queues etc

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#204

Post by aidenn0 »

flir wrote: post #155
badcppdev wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embedded roles pay less than almost any other role... I feel there should be some sort of diagram possible that explains which industries and technologies pay more or less.

The tooling's a lot worse, too. I'd be interested in hearing theories as to why.

Some reasons the tooling is worse:

1. A lot of the tooling is made by the hardware suppliers. Hardware suppliers tend to be very bad at writing desktop software; I have some theories as to why that is, but no direct evidence for them.

2. When tools are selected, they are rarely evaluated by software developers who will be using them. It's more like "Here's a list of boxes anything our development tools need to check" and then the final selection for anything that checks engoubh boxes is done for business reasons (cost, likely availability of support down the line &c.)

3. The same reason that embedded developers are often paid poor salaries; for a lot of hardware companies, the firmware development is treated more as a cost-center than as something that generates revenue.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#205

Post by martincmartin »

tinfoilboy wrote: post #127

I feel like I am in a decently unique situation where I learned C++ throughout my preteens and teens, and got a job straight out of high school writing C++ for Unreal Engine applications. Most of the C++ jobs I see when I look are things that I just honestly do not want to do. I don't really mind working with the language and wouldn't mind sticking with it. But I don't want to work on financial software, as I don't w…

How's your work-life balance? I worked in the games industry a couple times, at Activision in the 1990s and later at Rockstar, and like almost the entire industry, everybody was in crunch mode almost all the time. I remember when the list of holidays came around one year, Christmas was on a Saturday so they gave us Friday off. Someone asked if we were also going to have the Saturday, Christmas day, off.

Programming is essentially solving puzzles, so you can find the work interesting even if the topic area isn't interesting. No seven year old says "when I grow up, I want to write a memory allocator!" but doing it well, with as few CPU cycles as possible, without fragmenting memory too much, is an interesting challenge.

I wouldn't worry about what people have in their job descriptions. There's a quote from John Carmack about an ad for a Oculus dev that he technically wouldn't qualify for, and DHH who invented Ruby on Rails, was called by a recruiter asking whether he had 10 years of Rails experience when Rails was only 9 years old. A "Senior C++" engineer might just mean more than 2 years of experience with C++, who knows.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#206

Post by bfung »

wwweston wrote: post #60
joezydeco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are financial firms griping about the lack of developers. They're some of the highest paid developers in the world. But working for these companies is also insanely stressful. Long hours, high pressure. Maybe that reputation has caught up to them.

This speaks to the point in the article "The real problem is that C++ is neither easy nor loved," which they offset with "The language may be hard. But it's also worth it." The problem is that there's a law of diminishing returns to compensation. If you can work with a tool you like that helps you meet milestones and general expectations for $X00k generally leading to pleasant days, or can work with a tool that makes…

To further the idea, C++ can be loved if the firms invest dollars, invest marketing (open source, other ways) of it. They should support/invest in the community they want to hire from.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#207

Post by eddsh1994 »

spoiler wrote: post #112
eddsh1994 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ is here for longer than your career will last. Outside of HN/Web bubbles it's still used everywhere. Chances are you're writing this message on a C/C++ OS running a C/C++ browser engine. NodeJS and v8 are C++ applications. I went to a lecture by Stroustrup once who was asked what he thought of Java and jokingly said he didn't like to be negative about C++ applications. While this is a joke and Java isn't actually…

> Chances are you're writing this message on a C/C++ OS running a C/C++ browser engine. NodeJS and v8 are C++ applications. That's because there was hardly any mainstream alternatives (sans C, I guess) within its domains (ie systems programming and related field) until recently. That's not to say people haven't wished for alternatives. God knows I have

I've only worked in tech for a decade but I remember seeing this back then, and can find articles two decades ago about the same thing. There's just so much code in C++ that can't be re-written or can be re-written but will take hundreds of developer years. For example Rust doesn't even have a spec. I don't think I could use Rust for regulated healthcare/defense fields? There's not really that much support in hardware for Rust in robotics. If something works in banking why risk moving to Rust? Etc... I think Rust has a place but right now I'd wager a C++ code base is worked on way after the last Rust code base has been created.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#208

Post by tinfoilboy »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #177
tinfoilboy wrote: post #127

I feel like I am in a decently unique situation where I learned C++ throughout my preteens and teens, and got a job straight out of high school writing C++ for Unreal Engine applications. Most of the C++ jobs I see when I look are things that I just honestly do not want to do. I don't really mind working with the language and wouldn't mind sticking with it. But I don't want to work on financial software, as I don't w…

Google, Amazon, & Microsoft are nearly always hiring talented C++ engineers. So you're not limited to finance. Quite the opposite. I'd be surprised if the majority of C++ jobs had anything to do with finance.

Only finance and game dev was a little bit of hyperbole. I do see other jobs for like aerospace or GIS, at least looking at job postings on LinkedIn. Though I most assuredly do not have the requisite skills outside of just C++ to work in those fields.

I think big tech has the same issue where they don’t want to cultivate talent. I doubt Google or Microsoft would consider me at this stage in my career because I lack a college degree.

I will say that I do get recruitment emails from Amazon, though I’m sure those are just shotgun blasted to anyone with a pulse and a LinkedIn.

Re: The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

#209

Post by CoolGuySteve »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #177
tinfoilboy wrote: post #127

I feel like I am in a decently unique situation where I learned C++ throughout my preteens and teens, and got a job straight out of high school writing C++ for Unreal Engine applications. Most of the C++ jobs I see when I look are things that I just honestly do not want to do. I don't really mind working with the language and wouldn't mind sticking with it. But I don't want to work on financial software, as I don't w…

Google, Amazon, & Microsoft are nearly always hiring talented C++ engineers. So you're not limited to finance. Quite the opposite. I'd be surprised if the majority of C++ jobs had anything to do with finance.

Yeah but then you go in to interview at these places and someone who only programs javascript or python will ask you to answer a contrived whiteboard question by hand that involves manually writing out verbose C++-isms like "std::unordered_map hashmap;".

I went through a day of interviews at Facebook once where not even a single person interviewing me worked in C++. A lot of the interview cycle consisted of me answering basic syntax and STL questions or clarifying my handwriting which made it extremely difficult to finish the problem in the allotted time.

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