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C++ FAQs are full of massively complex conundrums like this for problems you just don't get in other languages. I used to love learning all these highly specifi

C++ FAQs are full of massively complex conundrums like this for problems you just don't get in other languages. I used to love learning all these highly specific C++ rules and playing language lawyer when I didn't know any better and thought it was a good use of learning time to become an expert. I've since moved on to languages that weren't full of problems like this that let you just get on with what you're meant to be making. If Scott Meyers can't figure this one out what hope would anyone else?

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Haha, same here. I learned C++ as my first real programming language, and I used to like the role of language lawyer at the forums. Still like the role, but now I do appreciate working with simpler (grammar-wise, not feature-wise) languages.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
munificent 10y ago
> I've since moved on to languages that weren't full of problems like this I think you mean aren't full of those problems yet. :) There's a lot of nasty corners in C++ but almost all of them are because it effectively has 40 years of wild success. (I say 40 because C++ inherits C's baggage and success.) It's totally reasonable to pick a younger language with fewer warts. Become an expert in it! Be productive! Ship lots of apps. Then, one day, decades and several versions hence, you may find yourself now dealing with all of the warts that language has accrued over time. At this point, you're too invested in it to jump ship. The marginal cost of learning a new corner case is smaller than the cost to start over from scratch and learn 2046's new hot language. Alas, expertise is hard. Everything you learn makes you better at X but slightly disincentivizes you to learn Y, which may not even exist yet.
- seanwilson 10y ago
  > Then, one day, decades and several versions hence, you may find yourself now dealing with all of the warts that language has accrued over time. What languages are getting even close to being as bad as C++ in this respect though? Java, Python and JavaScript have been around for a while now for example and they seem more opinionated in a way that stops too many warts from appearing. C++ has undefined and compiler dependent behaviour in the core of its design which I think is the real problem. Its complexity just multiplies at an exponential rate as more features and undefined behaviour is introduced.
  - nv-vn 10y ago
    C# maybe? The amount of features in it is very rapidly nearing those of C++.
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    Most languages have Undefined and Implementation specific behavior. Few languages have so carefully specified their undefined behavior as C++ though.
    - seanwilson 10y ago
      Any examples? My experience is you will frequently be bitten by undefined behaviour in C++ if you don't know the rules well but this is very rare in other languages. It's rare you're going to get a segfault or the whole program crashing in languages like Python, Java and JavaScript.
      - firethief 10y ago
        Those languages all have heavy runtime environments; if a segfault occurs it's an interpreter bug. Whether the mistakes you can make are a result of "undefined behavior" is a different question whether from the consequences of a mistake are an abrupt termination, or an abrupt termination with a helpful error message.
        sqeaky 10y ago
- junke 10y ago
  Not all languages age the same way. That's the reason I enjoy writing Lisp code even if I am not paid for it. There are some warts, but it aged well.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Java is over two decades old and one of the most widely used languages in the world. It has absolutely stood the test of time. While it does has its pain points its nowhere near as terrible as C++ and (in my opinion) is improving with new versions, and honestly, I think its a joy to program in though that might not be a "cool" thing to say. Whereas C++ is a chore to program in. That's my opinion, maybe I'm just too used to high level programming to be "good" in C++ but my experience is C++ breaks the "principle of least astonishment" every single time I use it. For example, a simple operation like clearing a stringstream is... not straightforward. ...Or maybe I'm just not smart enough.
  - blub 10y ago
    Well, there's not a lot of room for problems to crop up when all one can do is define classes :) Still, here's a few for you: the design of Cloneable is considered to be a mistake, as are exception specifications. These have real negative consequences. File IO was laughably bad and completely unintuitive needing several classes for the simplest of tasks (perhaps this was fixed more recently, but funny you should mention streams). Resource management was quite tricky to get right before try-with-resources and it still is if one wants performance. Memory leaks and resource leaks are still possible. Boxing and unboxing. The particularly weak type-erased generics. Java's saving grace is that it's a very programmer-friendly language. No matter how much one screws up, the worst that's probably gonna happen is a null pointer exception with a nicely formatted stack trace attached. The tooling is top class. All of this means that anybody with a pulse can program in Java and get a mostly working program. It won't be a joy to use, unless one is particularly impressed by classes, methods, interfaces in abundance, class hierarchies and factories. C++ is not like that. If one doesn't use the safer modern idioms and makes a mistake it will crash (if lucky),or act in weird ways or corrupt something. Sometimes there is no way to avoid dangerous code. There is no nice stack trace, you have to work for it. Probably have to stare at assembly and work with a fully featured but thoroughly painful to use command line debugger that's twice as old as Java. But it's powerful and really fast. It lets one design creatively, because it supports more abstraction possibilities. And it's not owned by any corporation, it's an international standard that runs on most platforms. I understand why people use Java. I use C++ because it's not just a tool that gets the job done, but also a way to challenge myself to make something that requires attention and skill. If I want to, it's me and the machine without framewerks, factories, fancy IDEs, dependency injection, package managers and virtual machines.
- chc 10y ago
  Eh, from what I've seen, a lot of what people now consider to be the "warts" of C++ were there when I learned it in the '90s. Not all, obviously — but a lot of them, like the STL and all the relics of C, are quite old. It seems similar to JavaScript. There were some initial good ideas and a bunch of early bad ideas and we're stuck layering improvements over that very uneven base.
ksk 10y ago
There is nothing to "figure out". You are putting up a false narrative that this is at all a big problem in C++. You'll have to do more work than that if you want anyone to seriously believe such an outlandish claim. The only reason such syntax bugs become popular is because because C++ has a sizable chunk of the complexity-loving developer populace who are attracted to such things. The vast majority of C++ developers have never even thought about such complexities because they don't need to. In much the same way nobody really sits and thinks how weird it is that 1 == '1' is true in JS, or how you can assign an undefined variable to itself in ruby, etc etc.
- seanwilson 10y ago
  Obviously this is very hard to quantify but for me the cognitive overload of being a good C++ is massively higher than for languages like Java, Python or JavaScript. C++ to me clearly has significantly more undefined behaviour, compiler specific behaviour and other quirks along with less safety nets (e.g. garbage collection, null pointer checks). Do you really find JavaScript, Ruby, Java and Ruby harder to master than C++?
  - ksk 10y ago
    The blog post was about a possible bug in the syntax/standard itself. I pointed out that all languages have weird edge cases and buggy syntax. If you want to discuss programming languages in general then that is a totally separate discussion. C++ is not in the same class of languages as JS or Ruby, so why would you use them interchangeably? C++ is meant for low level system programming, when performance or size are constraints on the problem you're trying to solve. The problem domain itself entails a certain amount of care. Also, JS and Ruby are indeed just as hard to master as C++. Heck even Bash is hard to master. Case in point. http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-golf http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-golf
    - seanwilson 10y ago
      My comment started with "C++ FAQs are full of massively complex conundrums like this for problems you just don't get in other languages" so I was making a general comment prompted by the article. > C++ is meant for low level system programming, when performance or size are constraints on the problem you're trying to solve. The problem domain itself entails a certain amount of care. Agree with this but my view is you should avoid C++ at all costs if practical because of its productivity and bug risk impacts compared to other solutions. If low level is required though your options are limited. > Also, JS and Ruby are indeed just as hard to master as C++. We'll have to agree to disagree then because C++ is an order of magnitude more complex in my eyes. Code golf isn't a good metric to me as that's all about using obscure tricks to write as few characters as possible which isn't how you code normally. I would rather measure how easy it is to write code with minimal bugs and C++ gives you a million ways to shoot yourself in the foot.
waynecochran 10y ago
I can see why he is taking time off C++ -- I have read his Effective Modern C++ and it did not encourage me to want to understand the depth of C++ anymore. Ruined my desire to be an expert -- does not lead to sanity. “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

TeMPOraL 10y ago

Haha, same here. I learned C++ as my first real programming language, and I used to like the role of language lawyer at the forums. Still like the role, but now I do appreciate working with simpler (grammar-wise, not feature-wise) languages.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

munificent 10y ago

> I've since moved on to languages that weren't full of problems like this I think you mean aren't full of those problems yet. :) There's a lot of nasty corners in C++ but almost all of them are because it effectively has 40 years of wild success. (I say 40 because C++ inherits C's baggage and success.) It's totally reasonable to pick a younger language with fewer warts. Become an expert in it! Be productive! Ship lots of apps. Then, one day, decades and several versions hence, you may find yourself now dealing with all of the warts that language has accrued over time. At this point, you're too invested in it to jump ship. The marginal cost of learning a new corner case is smaller than the cost to start over from scratch and learn 2046's new hot language. Alas, expertise is hard. Everything you learn makes you better at X but slightly disincentivizes you to learn Y, which may not even exist yet.

seanwilson 10y ago
> Then, one day, decades and several versions hence, you may find yourself now dealing with all of the warts that language has accrued over time. What languages are getting even close to being as bad as C++ in this respect though? Java, Python and JavaScript have been around for a while now for example and they seem more opinionated in a way that stops too many warts from appearing. C++ has undefined and compiler dependent behaviour in the core of its design which I think is the real problem. Its complexity just multiplies at an exponential rate as more features and undefined behaviour is introduced.
- nv-vn 10y ago
  C# maybe? The amount of features in it is very rapidly nearing those of C++.
- sqeaky 10y ago
  Most languages have Undefined and Implementation specific behavior. Few languages have so carefully specified their undefined behavior as C++ though.
  - seanwilson 10y ago
    Any examples? My experience is you will frequently be bitten by undefined behaviour in C++ if you don't know the rules well but this is very rare in other languages. It's rare you're going to get a segfault or the whole program crashing in languages like Python, Java and JavaScript.
    - firethief 10y ago
      Those languages all have heavy runtime environments; if a segfault occurs it's an interpreter bug. Whether the mistakes you can make are a result of "undefined behavior" is a different question whether from the consequences of a mistake are an abrupt termination, or an abrupt termination with a helpful error message.
      - sqeaky 10y ago
junke 10y ago
Not all languages age the same way. That's the reason I enjoy writing Lisp code even if I am not paid for it. There are some warts, but it aged well.
nommm-nommm 10y ago
Java is over two decades old and one of the most widely used languages in the world. It has absolutely stood the test of time. While it does has its pain points its nowhere near as terrible as C++ and (in my opinion) is improving with new versions, and honestly, I think its a joy to program in though that might not be a "cool" thing to say. Whereas C++ is a chore to program in. That's my opinion, maybe I'm just too used to high level programming to be "good" in C++ but my experience is C++ breaks the "principle of least astonishment" every single time I use it. For example, a simple operation like clearing a stringstream is... not straightforward. ...Or maybe I'm just not smart enough.
- blub 10y ago
  Well, there's not a lot of room for problems to crop up when all one can do is define classes :) Still, here's a few for you: the design of Cloneable is considered to be a mistake, as are exception specifications. These have real negative consequences. File IO was laughably bad and completely unintuitive needing several classes for the simplest of tasks (perhaps this was fixed more recently, but funny you should mention streams). Resource management was quite tricky to get right before try-with-resources and it still is if one wants performance. Memory leaks and resource leaks are still possible. Boxing and unboxing. The particularly weak type-erased generics. Java's saving grace is that it's a very programmer-friendly language. No matter how much one screws up, the worst that's probably gonna happen is a null pointer exception with a nicely formatted stack trace attached. The tooling is top class. All of this means that anybody with a pulse can program in Java and get a mostly working program. It won't be a joy to use, unless one is particularly impressed by classes, methods, interfaces in abundance, class hierarchies and factories. C++ is not like that. If one doesn't use the safer modern idioms and makes a mistake it will crash (if lucky),or act in weird ways or corrupt something. Sometimes there is no way to avoid dangerous code. There is no nice stack trace, you have to work for it. Probably have to stare at assembly and work with a fully featured but thoroughly painful to use command line debugger that's twice as old as Java. But it's powerful and really fast. It lets one design creatively, because it supports more abstraction possibilities. And it's not owned by any corporation, it's an international standard that runs on most platforms. I understand why people use Java. I use C++ because it's not just a tool that gets the job done, but also a way to challenge myself to make something that requires attention and skill. If I want to, it's me and the machine without framewerks, factories, fancy IDEs, dependency injection, package managers and virtual machines.
chc 10y ago
Eh, from what I've seen, a lot of what people now consider to be the "warts" of C++ were there when I learned it in the '90s. Not all, obviously — but a lot of them, like the STL and all the relics of C, are quite old. It seems similar to JavaScript. There were some initial good ideas and a bunch of early bad ideas and we're stuck layering improvements over that very uneven base.

ksk 10y ago

There is nothing to "figure out". You are putting up a false narrative that this is at all a big problem in C++. You'll have to do more work than that if you want anyone to seriously believe such an outlandish claim. The only reason such syntax bugs become popular is because because C++ has a sizable chunk of the complexity-loving developer populace who are attracted to such things. The vast majority of C++ developers have never even thought about such complexities because they don't need to. In much the same way nobody really sits and thinks how weird it is that 1 == '1' is true in JS, or how you can assign an undefined variable to itself in ruby, etc etc.

seanwilson 10y ago
Obviously this is very hard to quantify but for me the cognitive overload of being a good C++ is massively higher than for languages like Java, Python or JavaScript. C++ to me clearly has significantly more undefined behaviour, compiler specific behaviour and other quirks along with less safety nets (e.g. garbage collection, null pointer checks). Do you really find JavaScript, Ruby, Java and Ruby harder to master than C++?
- ksk 10y ago
  The blog post was about a possible bug in the syntax/standard itself. I pointed out that all languages have weird edge cases and buggy syntax. If you want to discuss programming languages in general then that is a totally separate discussion. C++ is not in the same class of languages as JS or Ruby, so why would you use them interchangeably? C++ is meant for low level system programming, when performance or size are constraints on the problem you're trying to solve. The problem domain itself entails a certain amount of care. Also, JS and Ruby are indeed just as hard to master as C++. Heck even Bash is hard to master. Case in point. http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-golf http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/code-golf
  - seanwilson 10y ago
    My comment started with "C++ FAQs are full of massively complex conundrums like this for problems you just don't get in other languages" so I was making a general comment prompted by the article. > C++ is meant for low level system programming, when performance or size are constraints on the problem you're trying to solve. The problem domain itself entails a certain amount of care. Agree with this but my view is you should avoid C++ at all costs if practical because of its productivity and bug risk impacts compared to other solutions. If low level is required though your options are limited. > Also, JS and Ruby are indeed just as hard to master as C++. We'll have to agree to disagree then because C++ is an order of magnitude more complex in my eyes. Code golf isn't a good metric to me as that's all about using obscure tricks to write as few characters as possible which isn't how you code normally. I would rather measure how easy it is to write code with minimal bugs and C++ gives you a million ways to shoot yourself in the foot.

waynecochran 10y ago

I can see why he is taking time off C++ -- I have read his Effective Modern C++ and it did not encourage me to want to understand the depth of C++ anymore. Ruined my desire to be an expert -- does not lead to sanity. “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations