Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

C++11 use in Chromium

chromium-cpp.appspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–35 of 35 posts

Re: C++11 use in Chromium

#31

Post by krylon »

pjmlp wrote: post #28
xpaulbettsx wrote: post #21

Is there a great guide to C++11 as a language? Typing "Learn C++11" into Google always results in information mixed with legacy C++

The new book from Bjarne "Tour of C++".

Thanks for the suggestion. I am not a C++ programmer[1], but I try to keep an open mind about other languages. I loved reading Design And Evolution of C++, Bjarne has a very nice writing style.

[1] Last year, I spent about a week doing maintenance on what you could call a legacy C++ application at customer site (I work as a sysadmin at a process engineering company). It was strangely fun (lucky for me, the application was quite well-written and I could easily find my way around the code).

Re: C++11 use in Chromium

#32

Post by LeoNatan25 »

kgabis wrote: post #30
femngi wrote: post #19

Stuff like this makes me really regret being a C++ developer. Companies and projects are adopting new features at a glacial pace and yet the programming world is still moving forward and it feels like despite the best efforts of the committee and the compiler teams C++ is doomed to continue being a 'legacy language' as companies either continue migrating to C# or sticking with C++98.

I would be so happy if that comittee started removing features instead of adding them. Guidelines like that are just a way of dealing with all the complexity they introduced to C++ over the years.

That would lead to total ignoring of new language revisions, as well as using old compilers, instead of gradually opening up to new features as the various constraints permit. This is not the answer.

Re: C++11 use in Chromium

#33

Post by CountSessine »

pjmlp wrote: post #29
CountSessine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of living with regret, why not ask yourself what kind of software you want to be writing and what kind of problems you want to be solving? Some software should be migrated to C# and Java. On the other hand, when it comes to runtime performance, memory footprint, and compiler and runtime availability, nothing matches (or even comes close yet) to C/C++.

Ada? D? Turbo Pascal? Modula-2?... Some of C and C++ advantages come from having 30 years of compiler optimizations, while compiler vendors stoped caring about implementations for other languages. I am big on C++, but as a language geek, I am looking forward to .NET Native release, and see how far it can take C# in this language X vs language Y discussions.

Ada? D? Turbo Pascal? Modula-2?...

All great languages, but try finding a D compiler for a Blackfin chip, or something similarly esoteric. C++ just goes more places where you would want it to go.

Some of C and C++ advantages come from having 30 years of compiler optimizations, while compiler vendors stoped caring about implementations for other languages.

Certainly - with a clean slate in 2014, you'd design something else - something that would make static analysis easier and static constraints possible. Basically, something like Rust. But C++11 is still pretty cool.

I am big on C++, but as a language geek, I am looking forward to .NET Native release, and see how far it can take C# in this language X vs language Y discussions.

I had no idea C# was 'going native'. I guess we've come full circle, what with this and news of Android L moving to ahead-of-time-compiled 'java'. Still, I have absolutely no interest in C#.

Re: C++11 use in Chromium

#34

Post by pjmlp »

CountSessine wrote: post #33
pjmlp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ada? D? Turbo Pascal? Modula-2?... Some of C and C++ advantages come from having 30 years of compiler optimizations, while compiler vendors stoped caring about implementations for other languages. I am big on C++, but as a language geek, I am looking forward to .NET Native release, and see how far it can take C# in this language X vs language Y discussions.

Ada? D? Turbo Pascal? Modula-2?... All great languages, but try finding a D compiler for a Blackfin chip, or something similarly esoteric. C++ just goes more places where you would want it to go. Some of C and C++ advantages come from having 30 years of compiler optimizations, while compiler vendors stoped caring about implementations for other languages. Certainly - with a clean slate in 2014, you'd design something…

> All great languages, but try finding a D compiler for a Blackfin chip, or something similarly esoteric. C++ just goes more places where you would want it to go.

Historical accident of compiler market. Not directly related to the programming languages themselves.

> I had no idea C# was 'going native'.

C# is already native when you target Windows Phone 8. It is just going native on the remaining Microsoft platforms.

Re: C++11 use in Chromium

#35

Post by kgabis »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #32
kgabis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be so happy if that comittee started removing features instead of adding them. Guidelines like that are just a way of dealing with all the complexity they introduced to C++ over the years.

That would lead to total ignoring of new language revisions, as well as using old compilers, instead of gradually opening up to new features as the various constraints permit. This is not the answer.

Being a simpler and easier to write/read language is also a feature, and a lot of people find value in such qualities. That's why golang is becoming more and more popular.
Post reply on HN