4 ms·

Haven't used C++ in a decade - how is the modern functional programming working out without a GC? Isn't object ownership tricky to untangle? I read your option

by ced 10y ago

Haven't used C++ in a decade - how is the modern functional programming working out without a GC? Isn't object ownership tricky to untangle? I read your option 3 and nodded - I'm using Julia for much the same reasons. I didn't expect C++ to be the answer, but it's cool that it can work out.

cjhanks 10y ago
If you are using Julia, then I will presume you are primarily working in some form of numerical computing. It is a very wide field, so it is difficult to say if object ownership will be tricky or not. If you are working with (b|m)illions of particles or entities which are capable of changing ownership, you will have a hard time in any language. Whether that's the C++ ownership being unclear or the garbage collector defragmenting your memory (just because you don't see the issue doesn't means it's gone in GC languages). That said, typically I find most algorithms have a computable upper-bound memory constraint and so you just pre-allocate a slab and then objects reference it. You will usually get better cache coherency and less wasted operations/sec. You're left with only a couple pointers you need to delete when you're done with the structure. As for `functional programming`, it depends on what you're looking for. C++ has two killer features for this, in my opinion; expression templates can seriously improve performance of functional composition (see Eigen3), and compile-time elision of type-dependent code branches (like a static if). Since I have learned to use `unique_ptr`, `shared_ptr`, `weak_ptr`, (`deferred_ptr`), and to prefer idiomatic accessors like `.at`, `.find`, `.insert` I cannot recall the last time Valgrind was angry at me. I think I end up writing `new` and `delete` maybe once a month(?). If I was designing widgets or applications with hard to define user interaction, I imagine I would have more complaints to share.
- ced 10y ago
  Interesting, thank you for the detailed answer. Expression templates do look very intriguing and powerful, I wonder what kind of application it enable. Julia has several cool performance-oriented constructs too: generated functions, loop fusion, JIT compilation (like your static if), and immutables (http://julialang.org/blog/2013/03/efficient-aggregates http://julialang.org/blog/2013/03/efficient-aggregates). It has a lot of potential, but then, so do other performance-oriented languages. It'll be interesting to do comparisons in a few years when the dust has settled a bit.
  - srean 10y ago
    > Expression templates do look very intriguing and powerful, I wonder what kind of application it enable. Fast chain of operations on an array was one of the primary motivations. You can take a look at Blitz++, I believe it was the first library to push that idea. But ET is not limited to numerical operations on an array, you could do query optimization, optimization of string concatenation, essentially any application where deforestation of parse trees have the potential to make things faster.
    - KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
      Curiously enough, linear algebra is the canonical application for expression templates, and yet if you ask a linear algebra expert, they will tell you that expression templates bring no benefits to 99% of linear algebra computations and make your code complex and bug prone. For examples of how expression templates can screw you up in unexpected ways, see: https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicLazyEvaluation.html https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicLazyEvaluation.html https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicFunctionTakingEigenTypes.html https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicFunctionTakingEigenType... https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicPitfalls.html https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicPitfalls.html
      - cjhanks 10y ago
        It depends on the codebase you are working with. Prior to 'auto' it was difficult to impossible to annotate expressions (thus forcing evaluation on assignment). Many people still believe "more lines of code = more slow", they will have problems. Functional non-template boundaries are also slow... any time you force evaluation you will see slow down. My experience... sometimes I have to pass through multiple reference frames to get to the correct affine transformation. I have three options: manually derive the transform (only works for a finite number of well understood transformations), waste BLAS ops on transform concatenation, or let expression templates fold numerical operations to the solution (often with numerical precision benefits btw).
        KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
- int_19h 10y ago
  One nifty trick to avoid writing new or delete even when you need manual heap allocation is to always use std::make_unique (or std::make_shared, as needed) instead. That way you're forced to spell out any transfer of ownership as it is happening, and so someone's always be sure to delete the object. You also dodge the bullet with indeterminate ordering of new's and constructors, that might result in memory leaks if one of the constructors throws. An important extension to this trick is that unique_ptr and shared_ptr are specialized for arrays. So e.g. to allocate a dynamic array of size n, you can do: auto a = std::make_unique<char[]>(100); or auto a = std::make_unique<int[3]>(1, 2, 3); and then use it mostly like an array - a[i] is overloaded and work as expected, for example. The reason why you'd want to do this rather than using std::vector is because you don't get the overhead of overallocation (since vectors distinct capacity and size) and default-initialization of the elements. With these, it's quite possible to write >100 kLoC of C++ without a single new or delete in sight.
  - shermanyo 10y ago
    Great tip, thanks for the clear example :)
cheez 10y ago
Yep. I use C++ and don't bother with optimization because it's fast enough on my slowest machines (5-6 years old).
Iv 10y ago
I use both C++ and C# a lot these days, and like both. I am more comfortable with C++ so memory management is usually not a problem, interestingly I find that it is in C# that it is sometimes annoying to wonder if the objects you manipulate are references or values, but you end up getting the gist of it after a bit of practice. The prevailing rule in C++ is to try to avoid using pointers when you can, you should rather use references. It is surprising the amount of cases when this is enough. A lot of people use smart pointers in C++, which implement reference counting transparently for a little overhead. shared_ptr was made official in C++11. It allows to make pointers on an object and delete it when all pointers were destroyed. I personally prefer to do without smart pointers and make objects ownership explicit: If I need to have long-lived objects I will put them in a structure/array/container and comment about it being the original owners. I would then do allocation/deallocation manually, which actually makes me more comfortable, as I prefer it to be explicit. But that is purely a matter of taste.
- int_19h 10y ago
  Not all smart pointers are reference counting - unique_ptr is not, and it has zero overhead compared to a raw pointer. Sometimes you just need to heap allocate, or, say, shove a bunch of objects of different derived types in a same container.
  - hellofunk 10y ago
    In fact, in my tests, unique_ptr with make_unique was faster than a raw pointer with new.
  - Iv 10y ago
    Yes sorry, I conflated smart pointers and shared_ptr. I rarely use the other kinds of smart pointers.
shermanyo 10y ago
Herb Sutter gave a really great talk on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE He has 3 guidelines: 1. Prefer scoped lifetimes by default (local members) 2. Else prefer unique_ptr and containers 3. Else consider shared_ptr His whole talk gives examples that show the flexibility of unique_ptr and how modern C++ can express ownership. See slide 5 here: https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2016/blob/master/Presentations/Lifetime%20Safety%20By%20Default%20-%20Making%20Code%20Leak-Free%20by%20Construction/Lifetime%20Safety%20By%20Default%20-%20Making%20Code%20Leak-Free%20by%20Construction%20-%20Herb%20Sutter%20-%20CppCon%202016.pdf https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2016/blob/master/Presentatio...

by ced 10y ago

cjhanks 10y ago

If you are using Julia, then I will presume you are primarily working in some form of numerical computing. It is a very wide field, so it is difficult to say if object ownership will be tricky or not. If you are working with (b|m)illions of particles or entities which are capable of changing ownership, you will have a hard time in any language. Whether that's the C++ ownership being unclear or the garbage collector defragmenting your memory (just because you don't see the issue doesn't means it's gone in GC languages). That said, typically I find most algorithms have a computable upper-bound memory constraint and so you just pre-allocate a slab and then objects reference it. You will usually get better cache coherency and less wasted operations/sec. You're left with only a couple pointers you need to delete when you're done with the structure. As for `functional programming`, it depends on what you're looking for. C++ has two killer features for this, in my opinion; expression templates can seriously improve performance of functional composition (see Eigen3), and compile-time elision of type-dependent code branches (like a static if). Since I have learned to use `unique_ptr`, `shared_ptr`, `weak_ptr`, (`deferred_ptr`), and to prefer idiomatic accessors like `.at`, `.find`, `.insert` I cannot recall the last time Valgrind was angry at me. I think I end up writing `new` and `delete` maybe once a month(?). If I was designing widgets or applications with hard to define user interaction, I imagine I would have more complaints to share.

ced 10y ago
Interesting, thank you for the detailed answer. Expression templates do look very intriguing and powerful, I wonder what kind of application it enable. Julia has several cool performance-oriented constructs too: generated functions, loop fusion, JIT compilation (like your static if), and immutables (http://julialang.org/blog/2013/03/efficient-aggregates http://julialang.org/blog/2013/03/efficient-aggregates). It has a lot of potential, but then, so do other performance-oriented languages. It'll be interesting to do comparisons in a few years when the dust has settled a bit.
- srean 10y ago
  > Expression templates do look very intriguing and powerful, I wonder what kind of application it enable. Fast chain of operations on an array was one of the primary motivations. You can take a look at Blitz++, I believe it was the first library to push that idea. But ET is not limited to numerical operations on an array, you could do query optimization, optimization of string concatenation, essentially any application where deforestation of parse trees have the potential to make things faster.
  - KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
    Curiously enough, linear algebra is the canonical application for expression templates, and yet if you ask a linear algebra expert, they will tell you that expression templates bring no benefits to 99% of linear algebra computations and make your code complex and bug prone. For examples of how expression templates can screw you up in unexpected ways, see: https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicLazyEvaluation.html https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicLazyEvaluation.html https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicFunctionTakingEigenTypes.html https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicFunctionTakingEigenType... https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicPitfalls.html https://eigen.tuxfamily.org/dox/TopicPitfalls.html
    - cjhanks 10y ago
      It depends on the codebase you are working with. Prior to 'auto' it was difficult to impossible to annotate expressions (thus forcing evaluation on assignment). Many people still believe "more lines of code = more slow", they will have problems. Functional non-template boundaries are also slow... any time you force evaluation you will see slow down. My experience... sometimes I have to pass through multiple reference frames to get to the correct affine transformation. I have three options: manually derive the transform (only works for a finite number of well understood transformations), waste BLAS ops on transform concatenation, or let expression templates fold numerical operations to the solution (often with numerical precision benefits btw).
      - KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
int_19h 10y ago
One nifty trick to avoid writing new or delete even when you need manual heap allocation is to always use std::make_unique (or std::make_shared, as needed) instead. That way you're forced to spell out any transfer of ownership as it is happening, and so someone's always be sure to delete the object. You also dodge the bullet with indeterminate ordering of new's and constructors, that might result in memory leaks if one of the constructors throws. An important extension to this trick is that unique_ptr and shared_ptr are specialized for arrays. So e.g. to allocate a dynamic array of size n, you can do: auto a = std::make_unique<char[]>(100); or auto a = std::make_unique<int[3]>(1, 2, 3); and then use it mostly like an array - a[i] is overloaded and work as expected, for example. The reason why you'd want to do this rather than using std::vector is because you don't get the overhead of overallocation (since vectors distinct capacity and size) and default-initialization of the elements. With these, it's quite possible to write >100 kLoC of C++ without a single new or delete in sight.
- shermanyo 10y ago
  Great tip, thanks for the clear example :)

cheez 10y ago

Yep. I use C++ and don't bother with optimization because it's fast enough on my slowest machines (5-6 years old).

Iv 10y ago

I use both C++ and C# a lot these days, and like both. I am more comfortable with C++ so memory management is usually not a problem, interestingly I find that it is in C# that it is sometimes annoying to wonder if the objects you manipulate are references or values, but you end up getting the gist of it after a bit of practice. The prevailing rule in C++ is to try to avoid using pointers when you can, you should rather use references. It is surprising the amount of cases when this is enough. A lot of people use smart pointers in C++, which implement reference counting transparently for a little overhead. shared_ptr was made official in C++11. It allows to make pointers on an object and delete it when all pointers were destroyed. I personally prefer to do without smart pointers and make objects ownership explicit: If I need to have long-lived objects I will put them in a structure/array/container and comment about it being the original owners. I would then do allocation/deallocation manually, which actually makes me more comfortable, as I prefer it to be explicit. But that is purely a matter of taste.

int_19h 10y ago
Not all smart pointers are reference counting - unique_ptr is not, and it has zero overhead compared to a raw pointer. Sometimes you just need to heap allocate, or, say, shove a bunch of objects of different derived types in a same container.
- hellofunk 10y ago
  In fact, in my tests, unique_ptr with make_unique was faster than a raw pointer with new.
- Iv 10y ago
  Yes sorry, I conflated smart pointers and shared_ptr. I rarely use the other kinds of smart pointers.

shermanyo 10y ago

Herb Sutter gave a really great talk on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfmTagWcqoE He has 3 guidelines: 1. Prefer scoped lifetimes by default (local members) 2. Else prefer unique_ptr and containers 3. Else consider shared_ptr His whole talk gives examples that show the flexibility of unique_ptr and how modern C++ can express ownership. See slide 5 here: https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2016/blob/master/Presentations/Lifetime%20Safety%20By%20Default%20-%20Making%20Code%20Leak-Free%20by%20Construction/Lifetime%20Safety%20By%20Default%20-%20Making%20Code%20Leak-Free%20by%20Construction%20-%20Herb%20Sutter%20-%20CppCon%202016.pdf https://github.com/CppCon/CppCon2016/blob/master/Presentatio...