In Defense of C++ • Hacker News Board

Re: In Defense of C++

#241

Post by im3w1l » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:23 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #71

im3w1l wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be acceptable to ship? This is how everything works in C++. You always have to mind your references.

This is like writing an article entitled "In Defense of Guns", and then belittling the fact it can kill by saying "You always have to track your bullets".[1] [1] Not me making this up - I started getting into guns and this is what people say.

To me it's as if someone releases a new gun model and people single that gun out and complain that if you shoot someone with it they may die. Like it's a critique of guns as a concept not of that particular one.

In a complete tangent I think that "smart guns" that only let you shoot bullseye targets, animals and designated un-persons are not far off.

Re: In Defense of C++

#242

Post by CyberDildonics » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:23 AM UTC

Defletter wrote: post #233

jlarocco wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not that big of a deal once you know how it works, and there are tools like CMake and IDEs that will take care of it. On Windows and OSX it's even easier - if you're okay writing only for those platforms. It's more difficult to learn, and it seems convoluted for people coming from Python and Javascript, but there are a lot of advantages to not having package management and build tooling tightly integrated…

This is pure Stockholm syndrome. If I were forced to choose between creating a cross-platform C++ project from scratch or taking an honest to god arrow to the knee, the arrow would be less painful.

Why? There are lots of cross platform libraries and most aspects are not platform specific. It's really not a big deal. Use FLTK and you get most of the cross platform stuff for free in a small package.

Re: In Defense of C++

#243

Post by CyberDildonics » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:25 AM UTC

AaronAPU wrote: post #72

loeg wrote: post #45

> in C++, you can write perfectly fine code without ever needing to worry about the more complex features of the language. You can write simple, readable, and maintainable code in C++ without ever needing to use templates, operator overloading, or any of the other more advanced features of the language. This... doesn't really hold water. You have to learn about what the insane move semantics are (and the syntax for m…

I’ve been programming C++ on a daily basis for more than 20 years and literally never use the >> operator. Never. Not rarely, never.

What about sometimes?

Re: In Defense of C++

#244

Post by nicwilson » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:32 AM UTC

Defletter wrote: post #239

renox wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

D (as always) is clever: the operator is ~ So no confusion between addition and concatenation and you can keep | for or.

Question, does that work with other types? Say you have two u16 values, can you concatenate them together with ~ into a u32 without any shifting?

It works with arrays (both fixed size, and dynamically sized) and arrays; between arrays and elements; but not between two scalar types that don't overload opBinary!"~", so no it won't work between two `ushorts` to produce a `uint`

Re: In Defense of C++

#245

Post by account42 » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:34 AM UTC

jjaksic wrote: post #154

fouronnes3 wrote: post #8

This is a good article but it only scratches the surface, as is always the case when it comes to C++. When I made a meme about C++ [1] I was purposeful in choosing the iceberg format. To me it's not quite satisfying to say that C++ is merely complex or vast. A more fitting word would be "arcane", "monumental" or "titanic" (get it?). There's a specific feeling you get when you're trying to understand what the hell is…

Wow, I don't understand what anything means in those memes. And I'm so glad I don't! It seems to me that the people/committees who built C++ just spent decades inventing new and creative ways for developers to shoot themselves in the foot. Like, why does the language need to offer a hundred different ways to accomplish each trivial task (and 98 of them are bad)?

Ignorance is not something you should be proud of.

Re: In Defense of C++

#246

Post by account42 » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:40 AM UTC

LexiMax wrote: post #98

wvenable wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overloaded operators are great. But overloaded operators that do something entirely different than their intended purpose is bad. So a + operator that does an add in your custom numeric data type is good. But using << for output is bad.

I will die on the hill that string concatenation should have its own operator, and overloading + for the operation is a mistake. Languages that get it right: SQL, Lua, ML, Perl, PHP, Visual Basic.

Those languages need a dedicated operator because they are loosely typed which would make it ambiguous like + in JavaScript.

But C++ doesn't have that problem. Sure, a separate operator would have been cleaner (but | is already used for bitwise or) but I have never seen any bug that resulted from it and have never felt it to be an issue when writing code myself.

Re: In Defense of C++

#247

Post by kergonath » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:44 AM UTC

Night_Thastus wrote: post #23

When it comes to programming, I generally decide my thoughts based on pain-in-my-ass levels. If I constantly have to fiddle with something to get it working, if it's fragile, if it frequently becomes a pain point - then it's not great. And out of all the tools and architecture I work with, C++ has been some of the least problematic. The STL is well-formed and easy to work with, creating user-defined types is easy, it…

> Fortran - It could just be me, but IDEs struggle with it. If you have any global data it may as well not exist as far as the IDE is concerned, which makes dealing with such projects very hard.

You really should not have global data. Modules are the way to go and have been since Fortran90.

> CMake - I'm amazed it works at all. It looks great for simple toy projects and has the power to handle larger projects, but it seems to quickly become an ungodly mess of strange comments and rules that aren't spelled out - and you have no way of stepping into it and seeing what it's doing. I try to touch it as infrequently as possible. It feels like C macros, in a bad way.

I like how you wrote my feelings so accurately :D

Re: In Defense of C++

#248

Post by dayvster » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:46 AM UTC

jbstack wrote: post #227

dayvster wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true and I will concede this point. Appreciate your feedback! However if I may raise my counter point I like to have a rule that C++ should be written mostly as if you were writing C as much as possible until you need some of it's additional features and complexities. Problem is when somebody on the team does not share this view though, that much is true :)

Counter-counter point: if you're going to actively avoid using the majority of a language's features and for the most part write code in it as if it were a different language, doesn't that suggest the language is deeply flawed? (Note: I'm not saying it is deeply flawed, just that this particular way of using it suggests so).

I wouldn't necessarily put it like that no. I'd say all languages have features that fit certain situations but should be avoided in other situations.

It's like a well equiped workshop, just because you have access to a chainsaw but do not need to use it to build a table does not mean it's a bad workshop.

C is very barebones, languages like C++. C#, Rust and so on are not. Just because you don't need all of it's features does not make those languages inherently bad.

Great question or in this case counter-counter point though.

Re: In Defense of C++

#249

Post by juliangmp » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:48 AM UTC

worik wrote: post #116

duped wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that to do this you must: - Use a build system like make, you can't just `c++ build` - Understand that C++ compilers by default have no idea where most things are, you have to tell them exactly where to search - Use an external tool that's not your build system or compiler to actually inform the compiler what those search paths are - Oh also understand the compiler doesn't actually output what you want, you…

None of that is a problem There are a lot of problems, but having to carefully construct the build environment is a minor one time hassle. Then repeated foot guns going off, no toes left, company bankrupt and banking system crashed, again

> minor one time hassle

I dont know if you're jokingor just naïve, but cmake and the like are massive time sinks if you want anything beyond "here's a few source files, make me an application"

Re: In Defense of C++

#250

Post by palata » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 9:50 AM UTC

jimbob45 wrote: post #144

pclmulqdq wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ has a plethora of available build and package management systems. They just aren't bundled with the compiler. IMO that is a good thing, because it keeps the compiler writers honest.

You say that as if Cargo, MSBuild, and pip aren’t massively loved by their communities.

They are massively loved because people don't want to learn how it works. But the result is that people massively don't understand how package management works, and miss the real cost of dependencies.