Could somebody redpill me on why something like D (http://dlang.org/) is not a better alternative to C++. Is that the library support or what exactly makes C++ still a better option in 2015? I am not sure what is the best alternative to C++.
The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
21–30 of 152 posts
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#22With the amount of time invested into writing the book it would be interesting to see what type of financial return he was able to get for it. Certainly I would hope he was able to make as much as if he were working in private industry for the same amount of time. (though somehow I doubt this is the case)
Being an author of a well regarded programming book has plenty of benefits that don't involve book royalties. You're considered an industry expert and can make money on speaking and consulting gigs.
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#23With the amount of time invested into writing the book it would be interesting to see what type of financial return he was able to get for it. Certainly I would hope he was able to make as much as if he were working in private industry for the same amount of time. (though somehow I doubt this is the case)
John Resig may be a bigger name, and he didn't make much from publishing.
http://ejohn.org/blog/programming-book-profits/
It doesn't seem like the reward is primarily financial, though I'm incredibly glad of both Scott's C++ books, and Resig's Javascript books.
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#24With the amount of time invested into writing the book it would be interesting to see what type of financial return he was able to get for it. Certainly I would hope he was able to make as much as if he were working in private industry for the same amount of time. (though somehow I doubt this is the case)
To within a disturbingly accurate margin of error I can tell you right now his financial return for this book: zero dollars.
There isn't enough money in tech books for writers to rely on it as a day job. At best it'll get you noticed and make other jobs or speaking engagements easier to get.
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#25Is this guy actually writing C++ programs in the wild? He often presents himself as an apostle in the C++ church, but, I am always surprised that he does not seem to apply his guidelines into any practical project of his. As a programmer, I'm suspicious when people have opinions and give advice but never showed me more than snippets of code. Like a master tailor that wouldn't sew. How come he gets that much recogniti…
His webpage: http://www.aristeia.com/ indicates that he has been a programmer since 1972. Even if he has been doing training/consulting for a couple of decades, that leaves a lot of time to get the basics down. I've never met him, though I have browsed one of his books once. My own personal feeling is that books like these can be invaluable for people starting out in the industry. It gives you a reference point to re…
I largely agree with you, BUT, this version of Effective C++ was less opinion and style oriented and more a guide to avoiding easy to make mistakes with some of the new C++11 and C++14 features. Not following many of the guidelines will result in incorrect and broken code.
My recollection of the older books is that they covered "best practices," and ignoring them may have been bad style, but the code would still be technically correct. Quite a few are still style issues, but it's important to recognize the difference before deciding to ignore them :-)
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#26Is this guy actually writing C++ programs in the wild? He often presents himself as an apostle in the C++ church, but, I am always surprised that he does not seem to apply his guidelines into any practical project of his. As a programmer, I'm suspicious when people have opinions and give advice but never showed me more than snippets of code. Like a master tailor that wouldn't sew. How come he gets that much recogniti…
His past C++ projects (or lack thereof) do not tell much about the quality of his books. He teaches people how to master C++, and that's a very precise skill. He doesn't claim to teach how to organize software, or how to manage collaboration between people, or any of the other skills that are necessary for a successful software project.
It's the same way that good grammar is only one of the skills involved in writing a great novel. Some scholars really grok grammar, and are excellent at teaching it, yet they haven't written great novels. I'm thinking of William Strunk Jr (of "The Elements of Style" fame), for example.
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#27Could somebody redpill me on why something like D ( http://dlang.org/ ) is not a better alternative to C++. Is that the library support or what exactly makes C++ still a better option in 2015? I am not sure what is the best alternative to C++.
D is a better alternative for many people. Speaking of Scott Meyers, C++, and D, his talk at DConf 2014 was humorous and you'll get a better sense of him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48kP_Ssg2eY
It depends on your actual goals. Personally, though I prefer Go for everything when possible, my favorite alternative to C++ is C++. If you want a true alternative, Rust is probably a smarter investment of time compared to D, based on traction. However, I'm uninformed about the D community as of late, and certainly won't be surprised of a future surge.
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#28Could somebody redpill me on why something like D ( http://dlang.org/ ) is not a better alternative to C++. Is that the library support or what exactly makes C++ still a better option in 2015? I am not sure what is the best alternative to C++.
When you develop something you consider not only the features of the language itself, but also the availability of libraries in this particular language. There is a large amount of high-quality C++ libraries and C++ can consume C libraries seamlessly. In most other languages you need to write often unsafe bindings to connect to C.
D simply doesn't have enough libraries to make it a viable choice except maybe for some niche area. For example, there are only 6k D repos on GitHub (https://github.com/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=language%3AD&type...) compared with 340k C++ repos. Also any high-performance code (at least in the area I'm working) is written in C++ or, sometimes, in C.
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#29Very interesting to reflect on the amount of time needed to write a technical book on a programming language. If I compare that to amount of time taken to write code (and forgive me for the horrible KLOC metric), I think one could easily average about 300 lines of good C++ code (including tests) per day on a new project -- probably more if you are working alone, but let's keep it conservative. So about 37.5 lines per…
> I don't know why, but writing a book seems waaay more effort than churning out ~25 KLOC of tested C++.
It is. I wrote a programming book, and the code for each chapter was always a breeze compared to writing the prose.
I rationalize it by thinking of English as a programming language. It has a fantastically complex syntax and semantics, tons of undefined behavior, and a few billion interpreters out there, each with a large number of quirks and bugs.
Writing a program in English that does the more or less correct thing on all of those interpreters ain't easy.
Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
His books are well-researched, that is for sure. However, you cannot use his ideas as gospel. He will try to teach the most conservative way of using C++, not the best for your purposes. I particularly think that there are several areas of C++, such as exceptions and constness that should better be avoided if possible. But each one has a different way to use the language.
I could understand why some people like to avoid exceptions. But constness? Really?
Constness when used on classes introduces a way to create objects that behave differently in different contexts. Are you calling a member function from a const or from a non-const pointer? Depending on that you could be running different code.
In my opinion you should make your mind about what the class does: is it mutable? then don't use it with const. Unfortunately, you are still required to use const in many places: copy constructors and operators, for example. However, you can still choose to minimize the use of const, and avoid it whenever possible.