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Well... not to be a C++ apologist, but bear in mind that these comments were made by Linus back in 2007 and 2004. His views may not have changed, but C++ has ce

Well... not to be a C++ apologist, but bear in mind that these comments were made by Linus back in 2007 and 2004. His views may not have changed, but C++ has certainly changed since then.

4ad 10y ago
Yeah, all those billions of lines of code of old C++ just rewrote themselves, so we don't have to worry about them.
hhjkjhkjhhlkj 10y ago
I think this is the sort of view that he has problems with. It shows that you haven't understood any of his actual issues. It is a mindset thing as much as just C++ being `unhelpful`. Not that it is in the posted email but one of his issues is that on-one actually understands C++, but everyone thinks they do.
- peterevans 10y ago
  I think I understand Linus' concerns. I guess I'm not sure how you conclude that I do not, but, so it goes. Languages do change, and implementations evolve. I think it's fair to temper criticism with the caveat that, hey, this was from a while back. And Linus' comments certainly were from a while back, considering the latest one was made in 2007. You didn't have shared_ptr, you didn't have unique_ptr, there was no auto type. I'm not going to argue that these things make C++ awesome. I really don't work in C++ on a day-to-day basis. But the language is certainly different now than it was in 2007, and I think that does matter. At least a little bit :)
  - drvdevd 10y ago
    I think the number one legitimate concern I can see, after just reading this for the nth time, is the trustworthiness of C++ compilers, which I believe was not so great in the early 90s. Now, I have no evidence to back this up (yet), but I'm willing to bet that clang and LLVM are verging on as trustworthy as (if not more than) GCC at this point. Nevermind MSVC, which would require its own analysis. I'm not a C++ programmer, but you're right: clearly it has advanced. And Linus has gone off on GCC as well for producing crappy output as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8089321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8089321)
gpderetta 10y ago
Then again, his latest project, a scuba diving application, is written in C++.
- hhjkjhkjhhlkj 10y ago
  It's not doing anything where performance is an issue.
- nervoustwit 10y ago
  He says C++ is not good for writing things like kernels, not that is good for absolutely nothing.
  - gpderetta 10y ago
    "C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C." I wouldn't call that a nuanced opinion.
- bbatha 10y ago
  I watched a video on this a few years ago, his reason for C++ is because QT basically requires it. He originally tried to write it in C using GTK, and hated GTK so he switched to C++/QT.
  - mrSugar 10y ago
    So, he hates GTK+ more than he does C++? what does that tell us about GTK+?

Well... not to be a C++ apologist, but bear in mind that these comments were made by Linus back in 2007 and 2004. His views may not have changed, but C++ has certainly changed since then.

4ad 10y ago

Yeah, all those billions of lines of code of old C++ just rewrote themselves, so we don't have to worry about them.

hhjkjhkjhhlkj 10y ago

I think this is the sort of view that he has problems with. It shows that you haven't understood any of his actual issues. It is a mindset thing as much as just C++ being `unhelpful`. Not that it is in the posted email but one of his issues is that on-one actually understands C++, but everyone thinks they do.

peterevans 10y ago
I think I understand Linus' concerns. I guess I'm not sure how you conclude that I do not, but, so it goes. Languages do change, and implementations evolve. I think it's fair to temper criticism with the caveat that, hey, this was from a while back. And Linus' comments certainly were from a while back, considering the latest one was made in 2007. You didn't have shared_ptr, you didn't have unique_ptr, there was no auto type. I'm not going to argue that these things make C++ awesome. I really don't work in C++ on a day-to-day basis. But the language is certainly different now than it was in 2007, and I think that does matter. At least a little bit :)
- drvdevd 10y ago
  I think the number one legitimate concern I can see, after just reading this for the nth time, is the trustworthiness of C++ compilers, which I believe was not so great in the early 90s. Now, I have no evidence to back this up (yet), but I'm willing to bet that clang and LLVM are verging on as trustworthy as (if not more than) GCC at this point. Nevermind MSVC, which would require its own analysis. I'm not a C++ programmer, but you're right: clearly it has advanced. And Linus has gone off on GCC as well for producing crappy output as well (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8089321 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8089321)

gpderetta 10y ago

Then again, his latest project, a scuba diving application, is written in C++.

hhjkjhkjhhlkj 10y ago
It's not doing anything where performance is an issue.
nervoustwit 10y ago
He says C++ is not good for writing things like kernels, not that is good for absolutely nothing.
- gpderetta 10y ago
  "C++ is a horrible language. It's made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it's much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C." I wouldn't call that a nuanced opinion.
bbatha 10y ago
I watched a video on this a few years ago, his reason for C++ is because QT basically requires it. He originally tried to write it in C using GTK, and hated GTK so he switched to C++/QT.
- mrSugar 10y ago
  So, he hates GTK+ more than he does C++? what does that tell us about GTK+?