C++ and the Culture of Complexity (2013)

Post by gpderetta » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #126

>Rvalue references provide move semantics, and they solve the perfect forwarding problem. Neither the performance issue that move semantics address nor the perfect forwarding problem exist in classic OO languages that use reference semantics and garbage collection for user-defined types. I don't get this. The performance issue move semantics solve doesn't exist if you just use automatic garbage collection? Is this wh…

Post by themusicgod1 » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #30

notacoward wrote: post #16

The bullet list near the end closely matches my own experience with C++. There's an inordinate number of features creating an even worse profusion of edge cases where they interact. Then the "solutions" for those edge cases usually add even more complexity. Worse, they force programmers to coddle their compilers. The ratio between what a C++ compiler will accept and what it will produce sane code for is huge . That's…

> C++, on the other hand, seems to have been designed by compiler writers for their own enjoyment and/or job security. Being a C++ compiler writer (Zortech C++, Symantec C++, Digital Mars C++) I can assure you this is not true at all. As to why C++ is so complex, my opinion is it is because it was designed a long time ago, what is considered better practice in designing languages has moved on, and C++ is unwilling to…

Post by tonyedgecombe » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:23 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #36

foo101 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ is a complex language no doubt. But software written in C++ need not be complex. Java, on the other hand, is a simple language. But the kind of unnecessary complexity I have seen in Java-land (EJBs, Spring, etc.) has no parallel in the C++-land. So going by your argument, I would choose C++ over Java to avoid the complexity jump, then profile the app, and if any part's too slow, improve that again in C++.

Java just pushes the complexity into the user's code. For example, a friend of mine once gushed to me about Java IDEs - with one click of a button, a hundred lines of boilerplate are automatically added! I replied a good language shouldn't need boilerplate code automatically inserted.

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:28 PM UTC

quietbritishjim wrote: post #111

pjmlp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Object Pascal, Eiffel, Ada, Mesa/Cedar, Oberon, Modula-2, Modula-3, Oberon, Oberon-2, Oberon07, Active Oberon, Component Pascal, Sather, Swift, D, Go, Rust are OO languages[1] and value based as well. [1] - As usual, there are many ways of doing OO, not just C++/Java style.

Object Pascal is definitely reference based, not value-based, at least not when I used it back in Delphi 7.

    type
        PTPoint = ^TPoint;
        TPoint = object
           x: Integer;
           y: Integer;
        end;
        
    var
      valuePointOnGlobalMemory: TPoint;
      valuePointOnTheHeap: PTPoint;

    begin
      {Can use it right away}
      valuePointOnGlobalMemory.x := 10;
      valuePointOnGlobalMemory.y := 20;
      
      {Need to heap allocate first}
      New(valuePointOnTheHeap);
      valuePointOnTheHeap^.x := 10;
      valuePointOnTheHeap^.y := 20;
      Dispose(valuePointOnTheHeap);
      
      {....}
    end.

Post by tzhenghao » Wed, Jan 31, 2018, 2:29 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #80

cageface wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ is a mess but it's one of the few languages that gives you low-level control of memory and fast code with zero or near zero cost abstractions. So for a certain class of application it's still the best choice. Music software, for example, is pretty much exclusively written in C++. I don't enjoy C++ the language very much but you can build some very cool things with it. Personally I'm hoping Rust displaces it from…

Very very slowly. Only now embedded development is starting to accept C++, and C still rules there anyway. Which means it took about 20 years to reach this point. And still Rust will need to go through the same certification processes that C, C++, Ada and Java enjoy for such scenarios.