3 ms·

I keep reading how C++20/17/14/11 is entirely different. I've been programming in C++ since 2004, involved in Boost then the standards committee. For me there

I keep reading how C++20/17/14/11 is entirely different. I've been programming in C++ since 2004, involved in Boost then the standards committee. For me there hasn't really been such a big change, it's always the same language at core, with a few evolutions, that mostly make it slightly more terse.

spacechild1 4y ago
IMO move semantics, auto, lambdas and smart pointers have changed the way we write C++ dramatically. I work on both old and modern C++ codebases and the difference is like night and day...
- mgaunard 4y ago
  Smart pointers are not a language feature, and are generally a bad practice (shared ownership is a bad idea to begin with). Lambdas, just syntactic sugar for function objects. auto, you could just spell out the type and provide a mechanism to deduce it (e.g. the old result_of protocol). Move semantics, this is simply distinguishing lvalues from rvalues in overload resolution. There were other ways to do that before albeit not as accessible to the layman.
  - spacechild1 4y ago
    I generally disagree with your assessment, but the following needs to be called out in particular: > Smart pointers are not a language feature, and are generally a bad practice (shared ownership is a bad idea to begin with). Smart pointers don't imply shared ownership, see std::unique_ptr. Or is std::unique_ptr considered bad practice as well? That would certainly be news to me ;-)
    - TillE 4y ago
      std::unique_ptr is of course the opposite of shared ownership, in that it requires you to explicitly transfer ownership if you need to do that. It's a beautiful feature which improves code clarity and reduces bugs.
      - spacechild1 4y ago
        Yes! Also, it significantly reduces the need for user defined destructors and move constructors/assignment operators.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- jahnu 4y ago
  I think I'd just give up and become a baker or something if I had to go back to pre c++11.

spacechild1 4y ago

IMO move semantics, auto, lambdas and smart pointers have changed the way we write C++ dramatically. I work on both old and modern C++ codebases and the difference is like night and day...

mgaunard 4y ago
Smart pointers are not a language feature, and are generally a bad practice (shared ownership is a bad idea to begin with). Lambdas, just syntactic sugar for function objects. auto, you could just spell out the type and provide a mechanism to deduce it (e.g. the old result_of protocol). Move semantics, this is simply distinguishing lvalues from rvalues in overload resolution. There were other ways to do that before albeit not as accessible to the layman.
- spacechild1 4y ago
  I generally disagree with your assessment, but the following needs to be called out in particular: > Smart pointers are not a language feature, and are generally a bad practice (shared ownership is a bad idea to begin with). Smart pointers don't imply shared ownership, see std::unique_ptr. Or is std::unique_ptr considered bad practice as well? That would certainly be news to me ;-)
  - TillE 4y ago
    std::unique_ptr is of course the opposite of shared ownership, in that it requires you to explicitly transfer ownership if you need to do that. It's a beautiful feature which improves code clarity and reduces bugs.
    - spacechild1 4y ago
      Yes! Also, it significantly reduces the need for user defined destructors and move constructors/assignment operators.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
jahnu 4y ago
I think I'd just give up and become a baker or something if I had to go back to pre c++11.