171–180 of 470 posts
I feel like I always hear this argument for continuing to use C++.
I, on the other hand, want a language that doesn't make me feel like I'm walking a tightrope with every line of code I write. Not sure why people can't just admit the humans are not robots and will write incorrect code.
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right_shifted = value / (1 << bits)
Division is slow, though. You should use something like: right_shifted = (int)(value * pow(2, -bits) - 0.5)
C++ will always stay relevant. Software has eaten the world. That transition is almost complete now. The languages that were around when it happened will stay deeply embedded in our fundamental tech stacks for another couple decades at least, if not centuries. And C and C++ are the lion's share of that. COBOL sticks around 66 years after its first release. Fortran is 68 years old and is still enormously relevant. Muc…
As long as people write software (no pun intended), software will follow trends. For instance, in many scientific ecosystems, Matlab was successfully replaced by Scipy. Which happens to get replaced by Julia. Things don't neccessarily have to stay the same. Interestingly, such a generational trend currently happens with Rust, despite there has been numerous other popular languages such as D or Zig which didn't have t…
> in C++, you can write perfectly fine code without ever needing to worry about the more complex features of the language. You can write simple, readable, and maintainable code in C++ without ever needing to use templates, operator overloading, or any of the other more advanced features of the language. Only if you have full control on what others are writing. In reality, you're going to read a lot, lots of "clever"…
I’m probably guilty of gratuitous template stuff, because it adds fun to the otherwise boring code I spend a lot of time on. But I feel like the 90% cutdowns are when someone used copy-paste instead of templates, overloads, and inheritance. I don’t think both problems happen at the same time, though, or maybe I misunderstood.
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None of that is a problem There are a lot of problems, but having to carefully construct the build environment is a minor one time hassle. Then repeated foot guns going off, no toes left, company bankrupt and banking system crashed, again
> There are a lot of problems, but having to carefully construct the build environment is a minor one time hassle. I've observed the existence in larger projects of "build engineers" whose sole job is to keep the project building on a regular cadence. These jobs predominantly seem to exist in C++ land.
> in C++, you can write perfectly fine code without ever needing to worry about the more complex features of the language. You can write simple, readable, and maintainable code in C++ without ever needing to use templates, operator overloading, or any of the other more advanced features of the language. Only if you have full control on what others are writing. In reality, you're going to read a lot, lots of "clever"…
Some lvalue move copy constructor double rainbow, and you’re left wondering wtf
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Overloaded operators are great. But overloaded operators that do something entirely different than their intended purpose is bad. So a + operator that does an add in your custom numeric data type is good. But using << for output is bad.
I will die on the hill that string concatenation should have its own operator, and overloading + for the operation is a mistake. Languages that get it right: SQL, Lua, ML, Perl, PHP, Visual Basic.
Arithmetic addition and sequence concatenation are very very different.
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Scala got this right as well (except strings, Java holdover)
Concatenation is ++
Great article. Modern C++ has come a really long way. I think lots of people have no idea about the newer features of the standard library and how much they minimize footguns.
I eagerly await the day when they do away with the distinction between ".cpp" and ".hpp" files and the textual substitution nature of "#include" and replace them all with a proper module system.
It's hard enough to get programmers to care enough about how their code affects build times. Modules make it impossible for them to care, and will lead to horrible problems when building large projects.
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You need something like std::launder in any systems language for certain situations, it isn’t a C++ artifact. Before C++ added it we relied on undefined behavior that the compilers agreed to interpret in the necessary way if and only if you made the right incantations. I’ve seen bugs in the wild because developers got the incantations wrong. std::launder makes it explicit. For the broader audience because I see a lot…
Do you see all the concepts you had to describe here? > Unless you are a low-level systems developer it is unlikely to affect you. Making new data structure is common. Serializing classes into buffers is common.
std::launder is a tool for object instances that magically appear where other object instances previously existed but are not visible to the compiler. The typical case is some kind of DMA like direct I/O. The compiler can’t see this at compile time and therefore assumes it can’t happen. std::launder informs the compiler that some things it believes to be constant are no longer true and it needs to update its priors.
> You can write simple and readable code in C++ if you want to. You can also write complex and unreadable code in C++ if you want to. It’s all about personal or team preference. Problem is, if you’re using C++ for anything serious, like the aforementioned game development, you will almost certainly have to use the existing libraries; so you’re forced to match whatever coding style they chose to use for their codebase…