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The pool of talented C++ developers is running dry

efinancialcareers.com

361–370 of 595 posts

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

#361
Companies seem to expect anyone that isn't a new grad to not just have recent C++ experience, but also in the right specialty. It needs to be game development, web browsers, or whatever.

Even as someone with C and C++ experience on my resume, I just haven't seen that many jobs I meet the requirements for.

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

#362
post #87

Writing new C++ code with all the modern approaches and tooling doesn't sound so bad. Troubleshooting a big legacy C++ codebase is probably something that Dante would have included in his Inferno as a punishment for pride and hubris.

C++ is legacy. You can't just ignore the fundamentals.

Think of the most modern technologies today.

Almost in every case, you'll find C++ at the core of them.

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

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most jobs want you in the office 8 hours a day.

Yeah for real, I there is so many tech people are sheltered now days that if anything difficult comes there way they can't handle it. 700k for an 8 hour a day job and claiming to be abused is ridiculous. It's fine for someone to say they don't want the job but claiming abused is something else. People work months away from there families to provide for them and make 10% of that wage.

It's not an eight hour job, you're completely misreading it. It's eight hours required plus another eight each day of overtime. Which is abusive for a software engineer.

And those people that work months away from their families -- they're being abused too. You'll notice that the owners of oil rigs aren't out there with them, for example.

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

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but I think you're missing the point. It's not the eight hours, it was the specific eight hours regardless of any other work you did plus all the overtime that couldn't be done at home. ie. The complete lack of seeing one's family.

Most of the jobs I can think have fixed working hours/shifts?

Not most software engineering jobs. And it wasn't the fixed eight hours, it was the eight hours on top of that each day that was the problem.

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

#365

Companies seem to expect anyone that isn't a new grad to not just have recent C++ experience, but also in the right specialty. It needs to be game development, web browsers, or whatever. Even as someone with C and C++ experience on my resume, I just haven't seen that many jobs I meet the requirements for.

Domain knowledge usually trumps programming language skills for more experienced positions, but C++ is so hairy they often want expertise there if they need it.

But those domains are usually tied to C++ anyways, games, web browsers, operating systems, etc… are usually written in C++ right?

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

#366
post #163
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just spent two years writing a medium size fresh c++ codebase in modern style with all the warnings turned to max and nearly every static analysis tool we could throw at it from day 1. It’s been an utter pleasure with no pain that can be blamed on c++ alone. It can be done :)

I personally consider C or C++ written with the best-of-breed static analysis deployed on it, preferably from day one, to essentially be a different language. Most of the criticisms of C or C++ are eliminated under this setup. You get different ones; the resulting language is even more complex than the base languages, and requires an even deeper understanding of what's going on, but at least you have the requisite su…

What static analysis tools are you referring to for C?

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

#367
post #343
post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep! We release the same plugins on Windows, macOS and iOS so we get great coverage with compilers too. I should set up a build for Linux with gcc but haven’t had the time yet.

cross-platform is no longer a bonus of a language or a toolchain. it is a must to have feature in any modern language. to give you some example - using the exact same toolchain on amd64/macos, I can build my golang code to run natively on risc-v/linux or arm64/windows. everything happens within seconds as I just need to override two environmental variables. there is no "haven't had the time yet" problem in such moder…

WTF are you talking about.

first of all, audio plugins come in a variety of formats, some of which are 100% platform specific (AudioUnits, Apple, I'm looking at you). You can be using the same toolchain across N platforms, but that won't make any difference to the fact that you're having to generate code that integrates with multiple syntactically and semantically distinct APIs.

secondly, in the audio plugin space, SIMD is often a vitally important tool. no cross-compiler or cross-architectural tools there, unless you opt for a common denominator so low it's not really worth anything. You want SIMD? You can't use anything that crosses compiler and/or architecture boundaries to any meaningful extent.

thirdly, in the audio plugin space, you need to create GUIs that run inside the host application. there's no good solutions for this that span linux/macos/windows, though there is the not-so-good solution of using JUCE ... except that a solid chunk of the folks who use JUCE don't use the GUI part at all. the idea that this stuff could ever be a feature of the language and span even just those 3 OS'es is ridiculous assertion and I wager will never be realized. there is no standard C++ GUI API for good reason, and the same reasons are why there will never be one for Rust or golang either. Just look at the list of GUI toolkit crates floating around out there already.

fourthly, "building" doesn't just mean compiling. the process of creating a packaged audio plugin will vary by plugin format, and by platform, and is often one of the most critical tasks that is so often slightly screwed up. once again, golang and rust are never going to contain builtin tools for this process - that's going to have to come from some other layer of your toolchain. granted, portable build tools do exist, but they are almost necessarily language agnostic and thus violate your assertion that it must be a part of the language's "native toolchain". the process of creating working software in general often transcends the language specific parts. once you have a set of object files, creating an executable has as much to do with the OS process launch conventions as anything in the language used to create the object files.

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

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW most of the folks who work with C++ in the financial industry are not really "messing with people's money" except in the sense of trying to exploit market inefficiencies to take it. In a typical quant hedge fund no actual money changes hands; instead, the C++ parts are there to perform analytics extremely quickly, which then feeds into an execution engine (usually also in C++, or sometimes Rust or assembly) that…

> except in the sense of trying to exploit market inefficiencies to take it that's precisely the bad part about it

Sorry what’s bad about making profit from market inefficiencies?

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

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah for real, I there is so many tech people are sheltered now days that if anything difficult comes there way they can't handle it. 700k for an 8 hour a day job and claiming to be abused is ridiculous. It's fine for someone to say they don't want the job but claiming abused is something else. People work months away from there families to provide for them and make 10% of that wage.

It's not an eight hour job, you're completely misreading it. It's eight hours required plus another eight each day of overtime. Which is abusive for a software engineer. And those people that work months away from their families -- they're being abused too. You'll notice that the owners of oil rigs aren't out there with them, for example.

> But I would have had to work in their office in Manhattan, be in by 8:30am every day and not leave until after 5 at a miniumum.

That’s what you said originally, which reads as mostly normal work hours, plus maybe some overtime.

If it was 16 hours a day, then please say so.

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

#370
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's FOH?

FoH = Front of House, i.e. directly supporting customer activity.

just a side note: long before a small part of the programming world took over this acronym, it used to mean the sound engineer (and sometimes other staff) that were in the venue, embedded in the crowd, working on live sound while the talent was up on stage. "back of house" was behind the stage, "front of house" was the room/venue itself, and the people working in it.
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