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> "if you're using C++ as a better C you're doing it wrong" As far as correctness and safety goes, this is still true. It's difficult to scale systems-level pr

> "if you're using C++ as a better C you're doing it wrong" As far as correctness and safety goes, this is still true. It's difficult to scale systems-level programming to large teams. C++ gives the opportunity for more explicit semantics and more aggressive compile-time checks. C can scale well and can be used safely, but you need to do a lot more through convention (always call xyz_Create and xyz_Destroy in pairs!) and through runtime checks (calls to assert, unit testing). D, Rust, OCaml, and a few other projects are interesting in this space since they provide some of the same benefits as C++ with respect to correctness and safety. Some are plausibly better in theory, though I'm not aware of huge, say, Rust projects that approach the size of huge C++ ones.

khitchdee 9y ago
Agreed. It's the size and type of the project that determines the choice of language more than the newness of the language. C++ was designed to meet the requirements of certain types of projects that were coming into vogue at the time it was designed. It was not a replacement for C. Some of the structural advantages of C++ over C can be achieved in C by using generative programming for example and building in automatic mechanisms to ensure there are no memory leaks for example. In other words, the C++ approach to structuring programs is not the only way to achieve the benefits that that structuring implies. It's just really easy to do it that way.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  It's true that generative programming can make up for shortcomings of C. But you're pretty much writing in two languages at that point, C and whatever spec generated the rest of the C code. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison to C++.
  - khitchdee 9y ago
    Well, some parts of the generative programming could be built into a tool and you probably wouldn't have to rewrite a generative program each time. So it's not really writing in 2 languages but using code generation to assist the programming process to reduce potential for error as a more flexible alternative to creating fixed constructs in a purpose built language.
    - humanrebar 9y ago
      You can get 90% of that benefit by using snippets in your favorite editor. I guess you could consider that "code generation", but "generative programming" means, to me, "check in the specification, not the production code".
      - khitchdee 9y ago
        You're assuming gnerative programming is used to completely replace direct programming. This doesn't have to be the case. It could also be used merely in an assistive role to supplement the ability to write code.
        humanrebar 9y ago
        I'm not. That's what I'm referring to as "snippets", though other forms of scaffolding do apply. If your position is that people should use more sophisticated editing/authoring tools on a regular basis, that's not that controversial a statement. I was just saying that full-blown code generation isn't merely writing in the same language but adopting a DSL as well, so we're not strictly comparing languages at that point.
        khitchdee 9y ago
        Right. Code generation has typically been associated with DSLs. Here's one way it could be done simply. Let's say you wanted to automate the process of memory allocation and deallocation. You would need a way to describe to the code generator the mepory requirments of your structure. For that you would need a description outside of C. But that description could be embedded into the comments of your code and your code generator be designed to parse those comments to determine what needed to be done. Knuth also came up with the idea of Literate Programming in which the description of a program is embedded as Latex in the code. This could work in a similar way. So, while you would use a DSL, the description would be inline with your code so the authoring process would be integrated and not 2-stream.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  > It was not a replacement for C. Sure it was for Bjarne, that is why he created it in first place. After being forced to re-write his thesis from Simula to BCPL, he swore never having to deal with such low level languages again. C with Classes was his solution to not having to write C directly, after he got his job at AT&T.
pcwalton 9y ago
> D, Rust, OCaml, and a few other projects are interesting in this space since they provide some of the same benefits as C++ with respect to correctness and safety. Can you name a correctness and safety benefit that C++ has that these programming languages do not?
- red75prime 9y ago
  Probably there are no such benefits. But taking the less serious approach, LLVM's -fsanitize=undefined could be thought of as the one.
- humanrebar 9y ago
  I didn't mean to imply that C++ was safer somehow. I just meant that those languages are also competing in that feature space in a way that C doesn't. And, on a pedantic level, C++ competitors can't provide exactly the same benefits of C++ because they took different approaches. What's a key design difference among these languages? Well, C++ can mostly just #include a C header file and go with it. The other languages provide FFI mechanisms, but they each require declarations of the FFI to match the compiled C code. So theoretically there's a little more room for errors in that translation, though I doubt that's a big concern on the whole. Each of those languages have more mature module systems, which should more than make up for keeping FFI interfaces in sync with C headers.

khitchdee 9y ago

Agreed. It's the size and type of the project that determines the choice of language more than the newness of the language. C++ was designed to meet the requirements of certain types of projects that were coming into vogue at the time it was designed. It was not a replacement for C. Some of the structural advantages of C++ over C can be achieved in C by using generative programming for example and building in automatic mechanisms to ensure there are no memory leaks for example. In other words, the C++ approach to structuring programs is not the only way to achieve the benefits that that structuring implies. It's just really easy to do it that way.

humanrebar 9y ago
It's true that generative programming can make up for shortcomings of C. But you're pretty much writing in two languages at that point, C and whatever spec generated the rest of the C code. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison to C++.
- khitchdee 9y ago
  Well, some parts of the generative programming could be built into a tool and you probably wouldn't have to rewrite a generative program each time. So it's not really writing in 2 languages but using code generation to assist the programming process to reduce potential for error as a more flexible alternative to creating fixed constructs in a purpose built language.
  - humanrebar 9y ago
    You can get 90% of that benefit by using snippets in your favorite editor. I guess you could consider that "code generation", but "generative programming" means, to me, "check in the specification, not the production code".
    - khitchdee 9y ago
      You're assuming gnerative programming is used to completely replace direct programming. This doesn't have to be the case. It could also be used merely in an assistive role to supplement the ability to write code.
      - humanrebar 9y ago
        I'm not. That's what I'm referring to as "snippets", though other forms of scaffolding do apply. If your position is that people should use more sophisticated editing/authoring tools on a regular basis, that's not that controversial a statement. I was just saying that full-blown code generation isn't merely writing in the same language but adopting a DSL as well, so we're not strictly comparing languages at that point.
        khitchdee 9y ago
        Right. Code generation has typically been associated with DSLs. Here's one way it could be done simply. Let's say you wanted to automate the process of memory allocation and deallocation. You would need a way to describe to the code generator the mepory requirments of your structure. For that you would need a description outside of C. But that description could be embedded into the comments of your code and your code generator be designed to parse those comments to determine what needed to be done. Knuth also came up with the idea of Literate Programming in which the description of a program is embedded as Latex in the code. This could work in a similar way. So, while you would use a DSL, the description would be inline with your code so the authoring process would be integrated and not 2-stream.
pjmlp 9y ago
> It was not a replacement for C. Sure it was for Bjarne, that is why he created it in first place. After being forced to re-write his thesis from Simula to BCPL, he swore never having to deal with such low level languages again. C with Classes was his solution to not having to write C directly, after he got his job at AT&T.

pcwalton 9y ago

> D, Rust, OCaml, and a few other projects are interesting in this space since they provide some of the same benefits as C++ with respect to correctness and safety. Can you name a correctness and safety benefit that C++ has that these programming languages do not?

red75prime 9y ago
Probably there are no such benefits. But taking the less serious approach, LLVM's -fsanitize=undefined could be thought of as the one.
humanrebar 9y ago
I didn't mean to imply that C++ was safer somehow. I just meant that those languages are also competing in that feature space in a way that C doesn't. And, on a pedantic level, C++ competitors can't provide exactly the same benefits of C++ because they took different approaches. What's a key design difference among these languages? Well, C++ can mostly just #include a C header file and go with it. The other languages provide FFI mechanisms, but they each require declarations of the FFI to match the compiled C code. So theoretically there's a little more room for errors in that translation, though I doubt that's a big concern on the whole. Each of those languages have more mature module systems, which should more than make up for keeping FFI interfaces in sync with C headers.