C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
reachablecode.com
C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
1–10 of 118 posts
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#2I had to do a UML thing for the first time in years for a class a few weeks ago[2].
I'm not 100% convinced that UML is actually useful at all. Obviously if you find value from it, don't let me take that from you, by all means keep doing it, but all it seemed to provide was boxes pointing to other boxes for stuff that really wasn't unclear from looking directly at the code anyway. It's really not that hard to look directly at the class and look directly at the "extends" keyword (or the equivalent for whatever language you're using) and then follow from there. Maybe if you had like ten layers of inheritance it could be valuable, but if you're doing ten layers of inheritance there's a good chance that your code will be incomprehensible regardless.
I'm not against visual diagrams for code, I draw logic out with Draw.io all the time and I've been hacking on the RoboTool [1] toolkit a bit in my free time, but what UML offers always felt more masturbatory than useful.
Maybe I'm wrong, it certainly wouldn't be the first time, but every time I've tried to convince myself to like it I've left a little disappointed. It always kind of felt like stuff the enterprise world does to look like they're working hard and creating value.
[1] https://robostar.cs.york.ac.uk/robotool/
ETA:
[2] By "class", I meant like an education class, not a Java class.*
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#3Whenever I start to feel like a real programmer making games and webapps and AI-enhanced ETL pipelines, I inevitably come across the blog post of a C++ expert and reminded that I am basically playing with legos and play-doh.
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#4Whenever I start to feel like a real programmer making games and webapps and AI-enhanced ETL pipelines, I inevitably come across the blog post of a C++ expert and reminded that I am basically playing with legos and play-doh.
I'm not a C++ developer at all, but unless I'm missing something this didn't seem terribly difficult?
This isn't meant to make myself seem smart or to try and make you seem dumb, I'm just curious what was confusing about this even from a high-level perspective. It felt like a clever but not too atypical metaprogramming thing.
Maybe I've just done too much Clojure.
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#5Whenever I start to feel like a real programmer making games and webapps and AI-enhanced ETL pipelines, I inevitably come across the blog post of a C++ expert and reminded that I am basically playing with legos and play-doh.
I would argue that C++ expertise doesn't necessarily correlate to the complexity of the software being developed. Although I do try to learn the fancy new features I know many developers who even though they are still only using C++11 features they are creating some very complex and impactful pieces of software.
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#6Whenever I start to feel like a real programmer making games and webapps and AI-enhanced ETL pipelines, I inevitably come across the blog post of a C++ expert and reminded that I am basically playing with legos and play-doh.
It's the other way around. You are the real programmer and the committee and the "modern C++" crowd are more interested playing with legos instead of shipping actual software.
No way anything std::meta gets into serious production; too flexible in some ways, too inflexible in others, too much unpredictability, too high impact on compilation times - just like always with newer additions to the C++ standard. It takes one look at coding standards of real-world projects to see how irrelevant this stuff is.
And like always, the problem std::meta is purported to solve has been solved for years.
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#7Reflection really was the missing piece, it's one of the things that are so nice in Java. Being able to serialize/deserialize a struct to JSON fully dynamically saves a lot of code.
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#8Whenever I start to feel like a real programmer making games and webapps and AI-enhanced ETL pipelines, I inevitably come across the blog post of a C++ expert and reminded that I am basically playing with legos and play-doh.
It's the other way around. You are the real programmer and the committee and the "modern C++" crowd are more interested playing with legos instead of shipping actual software. No way anything std::meta gets into serious production; too flexible in some ways, too inflexible in others, too much unpredictability, too high impact on compilation times - just like always with newer additions to the C++ standard. It takes o…
What's the solution that's been around for years?
> ... just like always with newer additions to the C++ standard.
This is objectively laughable.
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#9Still waiting for IBMi to support C++11.
Re: C++26 Reflections adventures and compile-time UML
#10Whenever I start to feel like a real programmer making games and webapps and AI-enhanced ETL pipelines, I inevitably come across the blog post of a C++ expert and reminded that I am basically playing with legos and play-doh.
It's the other way around. You are the real programmer and the committee and the "modern C++" crowd are more interested playing with legos instead of shipping actual software. No way anything std::meta gets into serious production; too flexible in some ways, too inflexible in others, too much unpredictability, too high impact on compilation times - just like always with newer additions to the C++ standard. It takes o…
I know the trading firm I work at will be making heavy use of reflection the second it lands… we had a literal party when it made it into the standard.