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It's not just language: it's support, tools, compiler etc. I just spent a day trying to get C++ working properly for a specific project in MSVSCode, surprising

by jariel 7y ago

It's not just language: it's support, tools, compiler etc. I just spent a day trying to get C++ working properly for a specific project in MSVSCode, surprisingly, it won't work, there are arcane and cryptic bits of help on StackExchange, and the sheer amount of inclusion variables, paths, special cases, compiler settings etc.. is beyond bewildering. It takes far too long for someone to develop the competency just to manage anything more than a trival build and this is a failure of the language because there's simply no reason for it - it's 'arbitrary complexity'. We're wasting serious chunks of our lives solving problems that shouldn't exist in the first place.

btilly 7y ago
As https://blog.plover.com/Unix/tools.html https://blog.plover.com/Unix/tools.html says: The bizarre mishmash of weirdness exists because so many different people invented so many tools over such a long period. And they wouldn't have done any of that inventing if the compositionality hadn't been there. I think we don't actually get to make a choice between an incoherent mess of composable paraphernalia and a coherent, well-designed but noncompositional system. Rather, we get a choice between a incoherent but useful mess and an incomplete, limited noncompositional system. I agree that C++ development can be a mess. But it is often a mess for good reasons, not bad.
- jariel 7y ago
  Yea, I agree. That's a good quote. I also would really like a 'strong agent' to just come along and do a 'new C++' without the cruft, kind of along the lines of the 'go' philosophy without necessarily inventing a new language. Maybe Rust is de-facto that. Or maybe D is it and we're not playing close enough attention. I guess your point is further validated by the hot mess of the web as well: javascript is a monster, somewhat tamed by TypeScript ... and I don't think Dart or anything else is poised to replace it.

by jariel 7y ago

btilly 7y ago

As https://blog.plover.com/Unix/tools.html https://blog.plover.com/Unix/tools.html says: The bizarre mishmash of weirdness exists because so many different people invented so many tools over such a long period. And they wouldn't have done any of that inventing if the compositionality hadn't been there. I think we don't actually get to make a choice between an incoherent mess of composable paraphernalia and a coherent, well-designed but noncompositional system. Rather, we get a choice between a incoherent but useful mess and an incomplete, limited noncompositional system. I agree that C++ development can be a mess. But it is often a mess for good reasons, not bad.

jariel 7y ago
Yea, I agree. That's a good quote. I also would really like a 'strong agent' to just come along and do a 'new C++' without the cruft, kind of along the lines of the 'go' philosophy without necessarily inventing a new language. Maybe Rust is de-facto that. Or maybe D is it and we're not playing close enough attention. I guess your point is further validated by the hot mess of the web as well: javascript is a monster, somewhat tamed by TypeScript ... and I don't think Dart or anything else is poised to replace it.