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The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

scottmeyers.blogspot.com

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Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#81

Post by andrepd »

blt wrote: post #44

I write C++ for a living and I like it, but it bothers me that we need a book that's essentially a list of "you can easily fuck this up by accident, watch out!" for now, it seems that C is insufficiently expressive and everything else is too slow. but the complexity of C++ is troubling.

The price for zero-cost abstractions and expressiveness is a monstrous complexity. If you want clean, expressive and easy-to-write code, you have a ton of languages where you can do just that. If you want performance and expressiveness, you will have to do with C++'s complexity.

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#82

Post by stinos »

jokoon wrote: post #70
blt wrote: post #44

I write C++ for a living and I like it, but it bothers me that we need a book that's essentially a list of "you can easily fuck this up by accident, watch out!" for now, it seems that C is insufficiently expressive and everything else is too slow. but the complexity of C++ is troubling.

> but the complexity of C++ is troubling. It's a multipurpose, statically compiled and standardized language. I don't think its complexity is a problem. Simplicity in a industrial level language like C++ can't really be expected. I'd say C++ is a for a multitude of uses, it allows to do things precisely and well, but it has a cost, the one of learning how to use it. 1) There are many other alternatives than C++ that…

Maybe the language will be a little easier to use in the future.

this is always double with C++.

At one point, it most definitely is easier to use now already than pre-C++14 or 11. Lots of those additions really make me enjoy using it (even more:) and often lead to less code which does the same while still not being harder to understand (often even better to understand) and having the same performance.

However, because of the backwards compatibility there still is cruft around which does make it harder to use because you basically need to know how to use it or in most cases that you shouldn't use it at all. Ideally one just wouldn't need to spend time / 'brain resources' on that kind of stuff. Simple example: I can still use std::auto_ptr. I won't because there are much better alternatives. I can still use std::tr1::shared_ptr. I don't, and I know what it is when I see it. But for a newcomer or slow learners this is just utter nonsense: need to figure out wtf tr1 is, why it exists, what to do with it, and so on.

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#83

Post by recentdarkness »

blt wrote: post #41
mikekchar wrote: post #8

Very 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…

300 lines per day sustained? that seems really high to me. what were you working on? didn't you ever spend days optimizing or refactoring with <= 0 net lines added?

> about 300 lines of good C++ code (including tests) per day on a new project

He wrote 'on a new project' So you can indeed get to such an average with writing new code for some time.

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#84

Post by restalis »

blt wrote: post #44

I write C++ for a living and I like it, but it bothers me that we need a book that's essentially a list of "you can easily fuck this up by accident, watch out!" for now, it seems that C is insufficiently expressive and everything else is too slow. but the complexity of C++ is troubling.

"the complexity of C++ is troubling"

This comes out of the fact that C++ is being developed more as an engineering tool than as a programming toy. When you're into real engineering, you don't have free lunch.

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#85

Post by MrScruff »

angersock wrote: post #50
blt wrote: post #44

I write C++ for a living and I like it, but it bothers me that we need a book that's essentially a list of "you can easily fuck this up by accident, watch out!" for now, it seems that C is insufficiently expressive and everything else is too slow. but the complexity of C++ is troubling.

Everything else isn't too slow, though, especially if you hit any meaningful IO.

There are many applications that either aren't typically IO bound, or where the IO (eg. gpumemory) is fast enough that you'll likely need C++ to maximise performance.

Writing software that pushes bleeding edge hardware is fun, which is why many people still want to learn C++.

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#86

Post by warkid »

seesomesense wrote: post #49
mpu wrote: post #5

Is 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…

Those who can't do, teach. Those who cannot do or teach, write books. ( And use the fame derived from them to get consulting gigs. )

well, "writing books" is "doing"

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#87

Post by jlebrech »

blt wrote: post #44

I write C++ for a living and I like it, but it bothers me that we need a book that's essentially a list of "you can easily fuck this up by accident, watch out!" for now, it seems that C is insufficiently expressive and everything else is too slow. but the complexity of C++ is troubling.

couldn't D, go, nim or rust fill that need?

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#88

Post by dietrichepp »

jokoon wrote: post #70
blt wrote: post #44

I write C++ for a living and I like it, but it bothers me that we need a book that's essentially a list of "you can easily fuck this up by accident, watch out!" for now, it seems that C is insufficiently expressive and everything else is too slow. but the complexity of C++ is troubling.

> but the complexity of C++ is troubling. It's a multipurpose, statically compiled and standardized language. I don't think its complexity is a problem. Simplicity in a industrial level language like C++ can't really be expected. I'd say C++ is a for a multitude of uses, it allows to do things precisely and well, but it has a cost, the one of learning how to use it. 1) There are many other alternatives than C++ that…

> I don't think its complexity is a problem.

C++ is complex in many ways which are unrelated to its core functionality. For example: most vexing parse, integer promotions, conflated language features (classes provide records, polymorphism, namespacing, encapsulation), header files, vector, the grammar is insanely complicated, et cetera. C++, like Common Lisp, is a standards effort which places more value on preserving the ability to run existing code than it does on removing language warts. Tools are now appearing like clang-format, clang-modernize, ReSharper, etc., but the equivalent tools have been available for other languages for quite some time now because those languages don't have the same complexity just at the syntactic level that C++ does. For example, Python has "2to3", and this was made with far fewer resources than "clang-modernize". Sure, C++ has richer semantics. But the syntax really is a maze, and if it weren't, we could have had our tools longer ago.

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#89

Post by inDigiNeous »

mikekchar wrote: post #8

Very 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…

300 lines of code per day ? Really, the LOC -measurement is highly dependent on what kind of project you are working on, and really doesn't tell much about what is going on with the project.

Don't know what the good metric is. Maybe functionality instead of lines of codes or kilobytes in the final binary. But how to measure functionality ?

Re: The Time Needed to Write “Effective Modern C++”

#90

Post by seabee »

restalis wrote: post #84
blt wrote: post #44

I write C++ for a living and I like it, but it bothers me that we need a book that's essentially a list of "you can easily fuck this up by accident, watch out!" for now, it seems that C is insufficiently expressive and everything else is too slow. but the complexity of C++ is troubling.

"the complexity of C++ is troubling" This comes out of the fact that C++ is being developed more as an engineering tool than as a programming toy. When you're into real engineering, you don't have free lunch.

You can see this with Rust which tries to satisfy the same niche. It's possible to avoid the gotchas in C++ while preserving the advantages, you just pay a different price by working harder to satisfy the compiler.
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