2 ms·

Even worse, all the devs jumping on using the C++20 features right now (like the other commentors in this thread) will make software that's near impossible to c

Even worse, all the devs jumping on using the C++20 features right now (like the other commentors in this thread) will make software that's near impossible to compile on a linux distro more than 4 years old. And even if someone compiles on a modern machine with a modern build toolchain there's no certainty that the binaries will run on the aforementioned slightly old distro. C++xx new features and improvements are good. But they come very fast and that futureshock is causing the fever that is containerization "solutions".

dgellow 6y ago
I honestly cannot say if that's a GPT-3 comment or not. Are you implying that the 3 years cycle of the C++ committee is the reason why people are using containers? Without being disrespectful, that doesn't seem to make sense.
- superkuh 6y ago
  Not exclusively c++xx but more like the rapid pace of new features in all of the big libraries (glibc, etc). And it's not the only reason for containers but it's probably the largest. I'm going to bet you haven't tried to use an older distro in the last decade and have kept up to date. Trying to run software from outside your repos that's written with the latest features is a serious problem on even mildly old distros. It wasn't such a serious problem with the slower rate of development 2000-2010. GCC 4 spanned an entire decade. I get that on the big corporate server side there are different reasons for containers; for scaling, deployment, and all that jazz. But on the desktop, or in academia, it's the primary reason. It's futureshock and containers are the fever.
  - einpoklum 6y ago
    Actually, a compiler is one of the less problematic things to keep up-to-date, since compilers (at least C/C++ compilers) typically have few dependencies, and can live just fine "on the side" of the system's main compiler. But some libraries or apps need half the world and its mother to run, including packages with subtle clashes, and then you're in trouble.

dgellow 6y ago

I honestly cannot say if that's a GPT-3 comment or not. Are you implying that the 3 years cycle of the C++ committee is the reason why people are using containers? Without being disrespectful, that doesn't seem to make sense.

superkuh 6y ago
Not exclusively c++xx but more like the rapid pace of new features in all of the big libraries (glibc, etc). And it's not the only reason for containers but it's probably the largest. I'm going to bet you haven't tried to use an older distro in the last decade and have kept up to date. Trying to run software from outside your repos that's written with the latest features is a serious problem on even mildly old distros. It wasn't such a serious problem with the slower rate of development 2000-2010. GCC 4 spanned an entire decade. I get that on the big corporate server side there are different reasons for containers; for scaling, deployment, and all that jazz. But on the desktop, or in academia, it's the primary reason. It's futureshock and containers are the fever.
- einpoklum 6y ago
  Actually, a compiler is one of the less problematic things to keep up-to-date, since compilers (at least C/C++ compilers) typically have few dependencies, and can live just fine "on the side" of the system's main compiler. But some libraries or apps need half the world and its mother to run, including packages with subtle clashes, and then you're in trouble.