I think I just got used to C++11. What is this dark magic?
Most of this stuff was possible in C++03. Newer standards only make it more convenient and (arguably) saner.
C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
11–20 of 83 posts
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#12Why is it every time I see a new article about C++ features my eyes glaze over? Am I just getting old, or has C++ jumped the shark?
I had a similar feeling. As a long-time C# programmer (how old is C#? That many years), I look at this and get really wide-eyed, "how is that at all a good idea?!" A lot of these features seem like ways to hack around the fact that C++ templates are not generics, they are literally templates for writing copies of classes. It seems like features like this are going to make code size explode. A lot of the examples also…
I'm very familiar with C++ and C# and overall I find I like C++ a lot better. There are a few nice convenience features of C# but knowing both languages I tend to find whenever they differ I feel like C++ made the better design choice.
And C# going all in on OOP is a part of that. It's reasonably clear now that OOP was mostly a big mistake and a dead end. C++ is less infected by going all in on it as it has always been a multi paradigm language.
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#13Why is it every time I see a new article about C++ features my eyes glaze over? Am I just getting old, or has C++ jumped the shark?
I had a similar feeling. As a long-time C# programmer (how old is C#? That many years), I look at this and get really wide-eyed, "how is that at all a good idea?!" A lot of these features seem like ways to hack around the fact that C++ templates are not generics, they are literally templates for writing copies of classes. It seems like features like this are going to make code size explode. A lot of the examples also…
I'm not sure what you mean by generics if you think that C++ templates are not a kind of generics. Do you prefer that everything happens at runtime?
Similarly, subclasses as opposed to templates carry a runtime cost. Virtual function calls are not free. Why pay that cost if you can deduce the right code from the types at compiletime? Besides, and this is probably a matter of opinion, I find code hard to follow that uses inheritance heavily.
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#14"a somewhat more awkward and uglier, yet slightly more correct way... all the functionality is right there. We’re not missing anything" might as well be C++'s motto :)
It's already there, but it's really ugly and hard to read, would be my conclusion from this.
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#15"a somewhat more awkward and uglier, yet slightly more correct way... all the functionality is right there. We’re not missing anything" might as well be C++'s motto :)
"The amount of things you have to know in C++ is arguably a bit larger." Arguably, lol.
In Bitcoin SV, there is a saying "devs gotta dev" to refer to the mass of crypto developers that add unnecessary complexity to their coins to solve minor or even nonexistant problems while not seeing the bigger (usually economic) picture. Everyone wants to make their mark on the space and there aren't enough leaders to direct the energy. C++ looks to be doing the same and not able to see the impact this will have on adoption. Oh well. I personally moved from C++ to Rust last year and haven't looked back.
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#16Why is it every time I see a new article about C++ features my eyes glaze over? Am I just getting old, or has C++ jumped the shark?
Probably because you are used to the paralysed C++ pre C++11. Nothing happens for years and now we have new functionalities every three years supported by all major compilers. But, also, many new functionalities are not for global consumption. The audience of many meta programming functionalities are library developers for example.
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The amount of things you have to know in C++ is arguably a bit larger." Arguably, lol.
In Bitcoin SV, there is a saying "devs gotta dev" to refer to the mass of crypto developers that add unnecessary complexity to their coins to solve minor or even nonexistant problems while not seeing the bigger (usually economic) picture. Everyone wants to make their mark on the space and there aren't enough leaders to direct the energy. C++ looks to be doing the same and not able to see the impact this will have on…
I disagree - I work in high-performance computing and I think in our case the complexity of C++ is actually mirroring that of the problem domain. Nothing else gives us the level of abstraction that C++ does, while still offering convenient ways to specify low-level performance semantics.
I think for a while Fortran was pulling ahead for large-scale numerical computing, but the mess of different options for parallelism (and also I think in our case a profileration of algorithm choices that made not just polymorphism but the explicit distinction between polymorphism and templates more important for code architecture) have brought C++ back into the limelight.
I know that some competitors in our space have a Fortran codebase and they essentially had to hack together C++ Templates as part of their build process (i.e. pre-process a template file and generate multiple sources which are then compiled).
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had a similar feeling. As a long-time C# programmer (how old is C#? That many years), I look at this and get really wide-eyed, "how is that at all a good idea?!" A lot of these features seem like ways to hack around the fact that C++ templates are not generics, they are literally templates for writing copies of classes. It seems like features like this are going to make code size explode. A lot of the examples also…
I'm not sure what you mean by generics if you think that C++ templates are not a kind of generics. Do you prefer that everything happens at runtime? Similarly, subclasses as opposed to templates carry a runtime cost. Virtual function calls are not free. Why pay that cost if you can deduce the right code from the types at compiletime? Besides, and this is probably a matter of opinion, I find code hard to follow that u…
By "generics", I presume they mean template parameters which are checked at declaration, not at use.
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#19Why is it every time I see a new article about C++ features my eyes glaze over? Am I just getting old, or has C++ jumped the shark?
Probably because you are used to the paralysed C++ pre C++11. Nothing happens for years and now we have new functionalities every three years supported by all major compilers. But, also, many new functionalities are not for global consumption. The audience of many meta programming functionalities are library developers for example.
Isn't every developer in a non-trivial software project a library developer? As soon as you have a common piece of functionality you want to reuse - that's a library.
Re: C++ : if constexpr isn't broken
#20Oh my. If only C++ would have used proper macros from the start...