That introducing kids to programming using C++ will ensure they never want to try again.
What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
11–20 of 56 posts
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#12After twenty years of using it? That I was wrong, that plain-old C really is better.
What I've learnt is that if you start writing C++ as a plan-old C, you quickly find yourself reaching for this and that feature from C++ that makes your job easier and your code more readable. Knowing where to stop is the tricky part.
I like to call that "C with std::vector"
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#13I really wish there was a "syntactic-sugar-on-top-of-C++" language that would compile down to C++ and have 100% compatibility with the existing C++ ecosystem (so that you can just directly use a class from any C++ library).
Something like TypeScript is to JavaScript, or like Kotlin is to Java. Would make the experience much nicer without having to wait on the slow C++ standardization process or deal with all the backwards compatibility baggage from the past (to a degree).
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#14I still hope someone will do transcript for it.
Slides are missing some parts from talk.
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#15Don't leave it forever to introduce a proper module system. Textual inclusion and manual header file maintenance is bronze-age programming.
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#16Lua is my C++. If I need speed - I'll just write it in C and interface to the Lua environment.
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#17After twenty years of using it? That I was wrong, that plain-old C really is better.
What I've learnt is that if you start writing C++ as a plan-old C, you quickly find yourself reaching for this and that feature from C++ that makes your job easier and your code more readable. Knowing where to stop is the tricky part.
Coding in plain C99 with some discipline can actually get you most of the benefits of C++, without any of its quirks.
The "object-orientedness" of C++ really boils down to implicitly passing the this pointer to member functions, inheritance + virtual functions, and namespaces. All of these can be emulated in what I would call "C with discipline". Just be consistent in your naming conventions, always use a common prefix for globally visible functions and types, and use structs of function pointers whenever you really need virtual functions.
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I've learnt is that if you start writing C++ as a plan-old C, you quickly find yourself reaching for this and that feature from C++ that makes your job easier and your code more readable. Knowing where to stop is the tricky part.
Coding in plain C99 with some discipline can actually get you most of the benefits of C++, without any of its quirks. The "object-orientedness" of C++ really boils down to implicitly passing the this pointer to member functions, inheritance + virtual functions, and namespaces. All of these can be emulated in what I would call "C with discipline". Just be consistent in your naming conventions, always use a common pref…
What about templates? For some reason, C programmers only seem to comment about the OO parts of C++ and never talk about templates. When you bring variadic templates into the mix, it's just more awesomeness.
And, before you mention it, use clang to avoid getting the page long templates related errors.
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#19"most researchers prefer an inefficient language because it's easier to get a paper to improve an inefficient language... I've seen dozens of papers on getting lisp almost as fast as C++, on getting Java almost as fast as C++. You can't do that with C++". A paper from the man himself on getting a type switch in C++ almost as fast as what you get in OCaml. http://www.stroustrup.com/OOPSLA-typeswitch-draft.pdf Lot's of…
It appears according to the abstract that it beats other languages while being implemented as "just a library":
"Our library-only implementation (...) For many uses, it equals or outperforms equivalent code in languages with built-in type-switching constructs, such as OCaml and Haskell"
In my opinion major weakness of C++ is just that the linker features more or less remained out of the language design. Turbo Pascal already shown eons ago the advantages of having modules instead of obj files. The slowness of compilation is still the major problem of C++ compared to the languages like Turbo Pascal and more recently Go.
Re: What if anything have we learned from C++? [video]
#20I really wish there was a "syntactic-sugar-on-top-of-C++" language that would compile down to C++ and have 100% compatibility with the existing C++ ecosystem (so that you can just directly use a class from any C++ library). Something like TypeScript is to JavaScript, or like Kotlin is to Java. Would make the experience much nicer without having to wait on the slow C++ standardization process or deal with all the back…
Nim targets compilation to C and (I presume C-flavored) C++: http://nim-lang.org/
In terms of playing nice Rust is doing great (no GC, and can create static libraries linkable by C/C++ compilers), but unfortunately requires going through plain C interface.