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I write C++ for a living but feel out of the loop. Do people still select C++ for new projects? Seems a waste when so many people have put effort into replacing

by z_open 7y ago

I write C++ for a living but feel out of the loop. Do people still select C++ for new projects? Seems a waste when so many people have put effort into replacing it with something modern. I still learn dark corners and pitfalls almost weekly. It also feels hard to tell when something is going to be a performance hit.

jupp0r 7y ago
I write C++ for a living and I think you should give it a try. If you stick to the core guidelines and avoid 95% of the language, it's actually pretty nice. I'd prefer Rust for most things I'd use C++ for, but there are definitely areas where it shines (look at boost::hana, which gives you a unified way of handling compile time and runtime computations, for example).
- z_open 7y ago
  If you don't use 95% of the language, can you really consider yourself to be using it? Sounds like you're basically using C with some wrappers.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    almost the opposite. you are trying to avoid writing anything like what would be considered idiomatic c code.
- FPGAhacker 7y ago
  Do you have a link or reference to the core guidelines?
  - jupp0r 7y ago
    http://isocpp.github.io/CppCoreGuidelines/CppCoreGuidelines http://isocpp.github.io/CppCoreGuidelines/CppCoreGuidelines
    - FPGAhacker 7y ago
      Awesome, thank you.
kllrnohj 7y ago
I do, but only because I haven't gotten around to learning Rust yet. There doesn't seem to be all that much happening in the lean & mean with strong C FFI category (aka, the "I want to use the GPU to draw stuff" category). I wish I could like D but I just don't, some of the decisions it made I think were mistakes. Go's FFI story is unfortunate, and it seems too narrow in target usage anyway. C gets a lot of rose-tinted love, but I'd never chose it over modern C++. And... well that's sort of it, isn't it? What else is there in this area?
- jordigh 7y ago
  > I wish I could like D but I just don't, some of the decisions it made I think were mistakes. Like what? D is everything I ever wanted C++ to be. The only reason I feel compelled to learn Rust is peer pressure, but if it were up to me, D would be the language everyone is getting excited about instead.
  - kllrnohj 7y ago
    I don't like D's GC. I don't like its multiple modes (-betterC) which only seem to really exist because enough people didn't like the original design of D. The defaults seem off (like shouldn't functions default as @safe?) I get a general impression of D being in just too weird of a space. It's occupying a zone somewhere between C/C++ & Java/C#, and I'm not sure that's a place I ever want to be. I'd rather just use Java/C# if I need D's feature set, and if I don't I don't want to deal with the headaches that result from trying to avoid them (or use -betterC mode which seems to just be what D should have been from the start)
    - jordigh 7y ago
      Oh, the GC. I don't understand why everyone seems so hung up on that. I've never noticed it at all. Maybe I just write code where the GC doesn't matter. I mean, I do use the GC, it's just that it's never been something that I care about, just like I don't care how exactly new and delete are implemented in C++ (are they just malloc and free wrappers? Eh, who cares.)
homie 7y ago
It really depends on the project. A lot of times that modern thing you're working with is just a wrapper around some C/C++ library (unless you're doing web dev - then there's a whole other set of issues).
jandrewrogers 7y ago
I currently use C++17 for all new projects, in a purely modern style which minimizes the complexity that must be dealt with. It is still a very complex language to learn, I certainly don't know every corner of it. For some types of high-performance infrastructure software like database engines, there really isn't a better alternative unfortunately. While there are other non-GC languages like C and Rust, equivalent software requires significantly more lines of code due reduced expressiveness, sometimes with a performance impact, and there are some types of code safety that are difficult to enforce in those languages. Because C++ is so expressive in a systems programming context and is rapidly adding valuable features, it makes it difficult for other languages to catch up to the point where there is a direct architectural translation from the latest version of C++ to some other language. I know quite a few shops that actively pull their code bases forward when a new C++ version lands, which is usually pretty painless, to take advantage of new features/safety and added tidiness.
munchbunny 7y ago
I generally avoid using C++ for new projects, despite having written a ton of it in the past. My problem with C++ is that writing "best practices C++" in 2019 is so different from writing "best practices C++" in 2011 that it may as well be a different language. And if it's going to be a different language, I'm going to prefer a language and toolchain that started from a cleaner slate, such as Rust. For example: C++11 got rvalue and move semantics and that was pretty awesome, but it took me a ton of mental overhead to cleanly reason about interfaces where I wanted to support move semantics. I think Rust's borrowing semantics clean up a lot of C++'s memory ownership/management issues into a simpler model that I just don't have to think as hard about. I sometimes still use C++ because it's easier to work with existing code. For example, if I am prototyping something that requires hitting OS API's, C++ is often the best combination of easily calling into the APIs while still getting modern conveniences.

by z_open 7y ago

jupp0r 7y ago

I write C++ for a living and I think you should give it a try. If you stick to the core guidelines and avoid 95% of the language, it's actually pretty nice. I'd prefer Rust for most things I'd use C++ for, but there are definitely areas where it shines (look at boost::hana, which gives you a unified way of handling compile time and runtime computations, for example).

z_open 7y ago
If you don't use 95% of the language, can you really consider yourself to be using it? Sounds like you're basically using C with some wrappers.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  almost the opposite. you are trying to avoid writing anything like what would be considered idiomatic c code.
FPGAhacker 7y ago
Do you have a link or reference to the core guidelines?
- jupp0r 7y ago
  http://isocpp.github.io/CppCoreGuidelines/CppCoreGuidelines http://isocpp.github.io/CppCoreGuidelines/CppCoreGuidelines
  - FPGAhacker 7y ago
    Awesome, thank you.

kllrnohj 7y ago

I do, but only because I haven't gotten around to learning Rust yet. There doesn't seem to be all that much happening in the lean & mean with strong C FFI category (aka, the "I want to use the GPU to draw stuff" category). I wish I could like D but I just don't, some of the decisions it made I think were mistakes. Go's FFI story is unfortunate, and it seems too narrow in target usage anyway. C gets a lot of rose-tinted love, but I'd never chose it over modern C++. And... well that's sort of it, isn't it? What else is there in this area?

jordigh 7y ago
> I wish I could like D but I just don't, some of the decisions it made I think were mistakes. Like what? D is everything I ever wanted C++ to be. The only reason I feel compelled to learn Rust is peer pressure, but if it were up to me, D would be the language everyone is getting excited about instead.
- kllrnohj 7y ago
  I don't like D's GC. I don't like its multiple modes (-betterC) which only seem to really exist because enough people didn't like the original design of D. The defaults seem off (like shouldn't functions default as @safe?) I get a general impression of D being in just too weird of a space. It's occupying a zone somewhere between C/C++ & Java/C#, and I'm not sure that's a place I ever want to be. I'd rather just use Java/C# if I need D's feature set, and if I don't I don't want to deal with the headaches that result from trying to avoid them (or use -betterC mode which seems to just be what D should have been from the start)
  - jordigh 7y ago
    Oh, the GC. I don't understand why everyone seems so hung up on that. I've never noticed it at all. Maybe I just write code where the GC doesn't matter. I mean, I do use the GC, it's just that it's never been something that I care about, just like I don't care how exactly new and delete are implemented in C++ (are they just malloc and free wrappers? Eh, who cares.)

homie 7y ago

It really depends on the project. A lot of times that modern thing you're working with is just a wrapper around some C/C++ library (unless you're doing web dev - then there's a whole other set of issues).

jandrewrogers 7y ago

I currently use C++17 for all new projects, in a purely modern style which minimizes the complexity that must be dealt with. It is still a very complex language to learn, I certainly don't know every corner of it. For some types of high-performance infrastructure software like database engines, there really isn't a better alternative unfortunately. While there are other non-GC languages like C and Rust, equivalent software requires significantly more lines of code due reduced expressiveness, sometimes with a performance impact, and there are some types of code safety that are difficult to enforce in those languages. Because C++ is so expressive in a systems programming context and is rapidly adding valuable features, it makes it difficult for other languages to catch up to the point where there is a direct architectural translation from the latest version of C++ to some other language. I know quite a few shops that actively pull their code bases forward when a new C++ version lands, which is usually pretty painless, to take advantage of new features/safety and added tidiness.

munchbunny 7y ago

I generally avoid using C++ for new projects, despite having written a ton of it in the past. My problem with C++ is that writing "best practices C++" in 2019 is so different from writing "best practices C++" in 2011 that it may as well be a different language. And if it's going to be a different language, I'm going to prefer a language and toolchain that started from a cleaner slate, such as Rust. For example: C++11 got rvalue and move semantics and that was pretty awesome, but it took me a ton of mental overhead to cleanly reason about interfaces where I wanted to support move semantics. I think Rust's borrowing semantics clean up a lot of C++'s memory ownership/management issues into a simpler model that I just don't have to think as hard about. I sometimes still use C++ because it's easier to work with existing code. For example, if I am prototyping something that requires hitting OS API's, C++ is often the best combination of easily calling into the APIs while still getting modern conveniences.