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'zero cost' is what makes some things possible. If your perspective is one where CPU and memory is effectively infinite then yes, who cares about zero cost. T

'zero cost' is what makes some things possible. If your perspective is one where CPU and memory is effectively infinite then yes, who cares about zero cost. The last C++ project I worked on I had like 32k of storage and some kilobyte sized amount of RAM. If C++'s abstractions weren't zero cost it would have been impossible to use in this environment. Java, C#, Go -- none of these are even close to possible. Why wouldn't I just use C? Because of improved programmer productivity and readability of the code. The reason C++ exists as a language today (and why Rust is it's direct competitor) is because of zero-cost abstractions. Because in many situations programmer productivity and compiler complexity is second to performance.

yyyk 5y ago
My takeaway wasn't 'never abstract'. That's obviously absurd. Even C itself has abstractions which it tries to make zero cost. Only that it's sometimes not worth it in the language, and C++ neglected to look at the other costs in the past.
- wvenable 5y ago
  No, that's the point of C++. If you want a language that doesn't do zero cost abstractions, there are plenty to chose from. If you want a language a step above C that gives you fine-grained control over exactly what code is generated and memory allocated than you have very few choices. You're basically just arguing that C++ shouldn't be C++ (and Rust shouldn't be Rust). We already have plenty of languages that provide high-level "costly" abstractions. The reason we need C/C++/Rust is for that zero-cost aspect. Historically, there were much fewer choices for languages and arguably C++ has been used for building applications that didn't need zero-cost features. But now we have plenty of alternatives and C++ still exists for that valuable niche that it provides. This is the reason Rust was created -- to provide this level of control without the baggage of C++.

yyyk 5y ago

My takeaway wasn't 'never abstract'. That's obviously absurd. Even C itself has abstractions which it tries to make zero cost. Only that it's sometimes not worth it in the language, and C++ neglected to look at the other costs in the past.

wvenable 5y ago
No, that's the point of C++. If you want a language that doesn't do zero cost abstractions, there are plenty to chose from. If you want a language a step above C that gives you fine-grained control over exactly what code is generated and memory allocated than you have very few choices. You're basically just arguing that C++ shouldn't be C++ (and Rust shouldn't be Rust). We already have plenty of languages that provide high-level "costly" abstractions. The reason we need C/C++/Rust is for that zero-cost aspect. Historically, there were much fewer choices for languages and arguably C++ has been used for building applications that didn't need zero-cost features. But now we have plenty of alternatives and C++ still exists for that valuable niche that it provides. This is the reason Rust was created -- to provide this level of control without the baggage of C++.