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> expect 1/100 programmer is able to understand/do this properly Personally, I'll never accept such an argument as a valid reason to judge the quality of a pro

by pif 10y ago

> expect 1/100 programmer is able to understand/do this properly Personally, I'll never accept such an argument as a valid reason to judge the quality of a programming language, unless we stop considering the amateurish programmers when computing the average. For example, a professional camera is meant to be used by a professional photographer, and it is judged exclusively by the quality of the pictures the best photographers in the world can take with it, not by the quality of my kid's birthday. In a similar way, I'd expect programming languages to be judged by what best programmers can do with them: if the average programmer is your company can't fully exploit the power of a mature, professional tool like C++, question the programmer, not the tool. Sure, you may say that, from certain points of view, C++ is rotten rather than mature, but it was never meant to be used by people who consider "C++ for dummies" a valid reference.

simias 10y ago
C aliasing rules are far from simple though. If I review some code and encounter a "restrict" keyword it's going to give me great pause. It's very easy to get it subtly wrong and those types of bugs are generally pretty tricky to track down (it will generally only fail with a certain level of optimization and can be very compiler-dependent). Since "restrict" is often used in function parameters you need to make sure every caller gets this right. And the compiler will do very little to help you track down incorrect usage. So in my opinion it's more like a professional camera featuring a "format storage" button prominently on top. A pro should know not to press it, doesn't mean that it's good design.
Galanwe 10y ago
>> expect 1/100 programmer is able to understand/do this properly > Personally, I'll never accept such an argument as a valid reason to judge the quality of a programming language, unless we stop considering the amateurish programmers when computing the average. When I say 1/100 C++ programmers are able to properly understand aliasing rules, and confidently use `restrict`, I was already talking about professional senior programmers. If you consider the whole set of C++ programmers that would drop to 1/1000. We can discuss the numbers, but from my experience working in some very low level areas where you would expect C++ (or C) developers to know that kind of thing, I would say 1/10 would understand really how `restrict` works. On that basis, I would say that, yes, C++ does not a good job at handling the aliasing of memory locations, since the required mental mumbo jumbo required to declare aliasing properly is too consuming for even experts.

by pif 10y ago

simias 10y ago

C aliasing rules are far from simple though. If I review some code and encounter a "restrict" keyword it's going to give me great pause. It's very easy to get it subtly wrong and those types of bugs are generally pretty tricky to track down (it will generally only fail with a certain level of optimization and can be very compiler-dependent). Since "restrict" is often used in function parameters you need to make sure every caller gets this right. And the compiler will do very little to help you track down incorrect usage. So in my opinion it's more like a professional camera featuring a "format storage" button prominently on top. A pro should know not to press it, doesn't mean that it's good design.

Galanwe 10y ago

>> expect 1/100 programmer is able to understand/do this properly > Personally, I'll never accept such an argument as a valid reason to judge the quality of a programming language, unless we stop considering the amateurish programmers when computing the average. When I say 1/100 C++ programmers are able to properly understand aliasing rules, and confidently use `restrict`, I was already talking about professional senior programmers. If you consider the whole set of C++ programmers that would drop to 1/1000. We can discuss the numbers, but from my experience working in some very low level areas where you would expect C++ (or C) developers to know that kind of thing, I would say 1/10 would understand really how `restrict` works. On that basis, I would say that, yes, C++ does not a good job at handling the aliasing of memory locations, since the required mental mumbo jumbo required to declare aliasing properly is too consuming for even experts.