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In Defense of C++

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Re: In Defense of C++

#191

Post by Animats »

paulddraper wrote: post #177
LexiMax wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is so sad obvious it’s painful. Arithmetic addition and sequence concatenation are very very different. —— Scala got this right as well (except strings, Java holdover) Concatenation is ++

Python managed to totally confuse this. "+" for built-in arrays is concatenation. "+" for NumPy arrays is elementwise addition. Some functions accept both types. That can end badly.

Re: In Defense of C++

#192

Post by TuxSH »

vlovich123 wrote: post #132
worik wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> These jobs predominantly seem to exist in C++ land.

You wish.

These jobs exist for companies with large monorepos in other languages too and/or when you have many projects.

Plenty of stuff to handle in big companies (directory ownership, Jenkins setup, in-company dependency management and release versioning, developer experience in genernal, etc.)

Re: In Defense of C++

#193

Post by kcaseg »

C++ is the third programming language I ever tried to learn, I got bored and gave up on both Python and JavaScript after like a month, I now have 150 active hours of learning (I tracked) in C++, and I love it, somehow I find it mentally more stimulating, not sure why.

Re: In Defense of C++

#194

Post by xenelor »

This reads the same way as any other 'defense', 'sales pitch', or what have you, but from a Rust evangelist. The author likes to use C++ and now he must explain to the world why his decision is okay/correct/good/etc.. If you like it that much, just use the thing; no one actually cares.

Re: In Defense of C++

#195

Post by codr7 »

kcaseg wrote: post #193

C++ is the third programming language I ever tried to learn, I got bored and gave up on both Python and JavaScript after like a month, I now have 150 active hours of learning (I tracked) in C++, and I love it, somehow I find it mentally more stimulating, not sure why.

4th, after basic, assembly & pascal. For a long, long time; it was my default language for personal projects.

But just keeping track of all the features and the exotic ways they interact is a full time job. There are people who have dedicated entire lives to understanding even a tiny corner of the language, and they still don't manage.

Not worth the effort for me, there are other languages.

Re: In Defense of C++

#196

Post by codr7 »

ot wrote: post #56
loeg wrote: post #45

> 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. This... doesn't really hold water. You have to learn about what the insane move semantics are (and the syntax for m…

Reminds me of the old quote > everyone only uses 20% of C++, the problem is that everyone uses a different 20%

I suspect that percentage has shrunk quite a bit lately.

Re: In Defense of C++

#197

Post by jcelerier »

jimbob45 wrote: post #144
pclmulqdq wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C++ has a plethora of available build and package management systems. They just aren't bundled with the compiler. IMO that is a good thing, because it keeps the compiler writers honest.

You say that as if Cargo, MSBuild, and pip aren’t massively loved by their communities.

Coming from c++, pip and python dependency management is the bane of my life. How do you make a python software leveraging pytorch that will ship as a single .exe and be able to target whatever gpu the user has without downloads?

Re: In Defense of C++

#198

Post by alkonaut »

> Yes, C++ can be unsafe if you don’t know what you’re doing. But here’s the thing: all programming languages are unsafe if you don’t know what you’re doing.

I think this is one of the worst (and most often repeated arguments) about C++. C and C++ are inherently unsafe in ways that trip up _all_ developers even the most seasoned ones, even when using ALL the modern C++ features designed to help make C++ somewhat safer.

Re: In Defense of C++

#199

Post by fluoridation »

sunshowers wrote: post #182
fluoridation wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lambdas are syntactic sugar over functors, and it was possible all along to define a functor that stores a local address and then return it from the scope, thus leaving a dangling pointer. They don't introduce any new places for bugs to creep in, other than confusing programmers who are used to garbage-collected languages. That C++11 is safer than C++98 is still true, as this and other convenience features make it ha…

The ergonomics matter a lot. Of course a lambda is equivalent to a functor that stores a local reference, but making errors with lambdas requires disturbingly little friction. In any case, if you want safety and performance, use Rust.

>making errors with lambdas requires disturbingly little friction

Not any less than other parts of the language. If you capture by reference you need to mind your lifetimes. If you need something more dynamic then capture by copy and use pointers as needed. It unfortunate the developer who introduced that bug you mentioned didn't keep that in mind, but this is not a problem that lambdas introduced; it's been there all along. The exact same thing would've happened if they had stored a reference to a dynamic object in another dynamic object. If the latter lives longer than the former you get a dangling reference.

>In any case, if you want safety and performance, use Rust.

Personally, I prefer performance and stability. I've already had to fix broken dependencies multiple times after a new rustc version was released. Wake me up when the language is done evolving on a monthly basis.

Re: In Defense of C++

#200

Post by jcelerier »

loeg wrote: post #45

> 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. This... doesn't really hold water. You have to learn about what the insane move semantics are (and the syntax for m…

> Overloaded operators like operator*() and operatoryou don't need to understand what an overloaded operator is doing any more than you have to understand the implementation of every function you call, recursively
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