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He's a C++ programmer, so I assume he can also code in C. So do I. When you go so low-level, then everything else just translates to "overhead" and it's always

by scoutt 7y ago

He's a C++ programmer, so I assume he can also code in C. So do I. When you go so low-level, then everything else just translates to "overhead" and it's always a trade-off (for example exchanging performance with "fast coding" or "easy of use"). At that point, you know there is nothing better, if better is understood in terms as "performance" (I develop firmware), so there is little room for improvement. Maybe rust? I don't know. It may just be another trade-off. "Ease of use" and "coding speed" are things that should be interesting to our bosses in order to save a few bucks. > others are doing that might be better Of course, in my case I am always open for new techniques: I'd be rather looking and understanding how John Carmack splits and scans BSP trees instead of thinking that X language will do it for me (at the cost of "insert trade-off here"). But no. Just as the author, I'm not going to learn node.js because "new".

notacoward 7y ago
> He's a C++ programmer, so I assume he can also code in C. I would make no such assumption. Most C++ programmers I've known would have a hard time being productive in a language where they had no collections, templates, virtual functions, destructors, lambdas, exceptions, etc. Trading deep knowledge of how C++ manages memory for knowing how to do it yourself might be even more of a challenge. A lot of C++ programmers know C because they were around as the two evolved, but at this point there are many who entered the profession with C++ and would find C almost as confounding as COBOL.
- jmnicolas 7y ago
  In the article he says he learned C++ in 1995, so he probably knows C.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - notacoward 7y ago
    He says he learned C++ in 1990, and never says anything about C, so it's still likely that he only has a distant memory of something like C. I have a distant memory of something like Ada, but I might struggle for a while if asked to program in Ada professionally.
    - jmnicolas 7y ago
      I bet 1990 C++ was for most people C with classes.
      - notacoward 7y ago
        Pretty much, IIRC. I wasn't exposed to it until about a decade later myself, but my wife was. Most or possibly even all C++ compilers were still front ends for C compilers. Exceptions either didn't exist or weren't considered reliable, so her company rolled their own using setjmp and longjmp - which don't do stack unwinding so forget about relying on destructors and RAII. Similar for templates, so no STL. Does anyone even remember the NIH class library any more? It was very stripped down compared to the cancer it has become. So yeah, somebody who knew C++ in 1990 was probably within spitting distance of knowing C at the time ... but now, they know it the same way I know Lisp or Prolog, since I used those long ago too. But if they've stuck with C++ ever since, do they effectively know C today? Could they be productive in it more quickly than they could in Rust or Go which they'd never even seen before? That's not clear at all.
      - kazinator 7y ago
        In the mid 90's, I was very surprised to discover that a popular telnet program widely distributed in Linux distros was written in C++, with cruft like abstract base classes with pure virtual functions and whatnot. (I was looking at the source because the stupid thing would disconnect whenever the PPP connection went donw; it was over-reacting to EHOSTUNREACH errors on the socket, which are recoverable; I fixed that, at least for myself.) Here it is: https://github.com/marado/netkit-telnet/tree/master/netkit-telnet-0.17 https://github.com/marado/netkit-telnet/tree/master/netkit-t...
overgard 7y ago
I mean I’m a C++ programmer too, but I learn other tech so i dont end up myopic in how to best solve a problem. You shouldn’t learn node.js because its “new” (also: its definitely not new anymore), you should learn node because c++ is bad at most of the things node is good at (and vice versa). (and before you think im picking on systems programmers, I also have a dim view of web developers that refuse to learn any non-web tools)

by scoutt 7y ago

notacoward 7y ago

> He's a C++ programmer, so I assume he can also code in C. I would make no such assumption. Most C++ programmers I've known would have a hard time being productive in a language where they had no collections, templates, virtual functions, destructors, lambdas, exceptions, etc. Trading deep knowledge of how C++ manages memory for knowing how to do it yourself might be even more of a challenge. A lot of C++ programmers know C because they were around as the two evolved, but at this point there are many who entered the profession with C++ and would find C almost as confounding as COBOL.

jmnicolas 7y ago
In the article he says he learned C++ in 1995, so he probably knows C.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- notacoward 7y ago
  He says he learned C++ in 1990, and never says anything about C, so it's still likely that he only has a distant memory of something like C. I have a distant memory of something like Ada, but I might struggle for a while if asked to program in Ada professionally.
  - jmnicolas 7y ago
    I bet 1990 C++ was for most people C with classes.
    - notacoward 7y ago
      Pretty much, IIRC. I wasn't exposed to it until about a decade later myself, but my wife was. Most or possibly even all C++ compilers were still front ends for C compilers. Exceptions either didn't exist or weren't considered reliable, so her company rolled their own using setjmp and longjmp - which don't do stack unwinding so forget about relying on destructors and RAII. Similar for templates, so no STL. Does anyone even remember the NIH class library any more? It was very stripped down compared to the cancer it has become. So yeah, somebody who knew C++ in 1990 was probably within spitting distance of knowing C at the time ... but now, they know it the same way I know Lisp or Prolog, since I used those long ago too. But if they've stuck with C++ ever since, do they effectively know C today? Could they be productive in it more quickly than they could in Rust or Go which they'd never even seen before? That's not clear at all.
    - kazinator 7y ago
      In the mid 90's, I was very surprised to discover that a popular telnet program widely distributed in Linux distros was written in C++, with cruft like abstract base classes with pure virtual functions and whatnot. (I was looking at the source because the stupid thing would disconnect whenever the PPP connection went donw; it was over-reacting to EHOSTUNREACH errors on the socket, which are recoverable; I fixed that, at least for myself.) Here it is: https://github.com/marado/netkit-telnet/tree/master/netkit-telnet-0.17 https://github.com/marado/netkit-telnet/tree/master/netkit-t...

overgard 7y ago

I mean I’m a C++ programmer too, but I learn other tech so i dont end up myopic in how to best solve a problem. You shouldn’t learn node.js because its “new” (also: its definitely not new anymore), you should learn node because c++ is bad at most of the things node is good at (and vice versa). (and before you think im picking on systems programmers, I also have a dim view of web developers that refuse to learn any non-web tools)