4 ms·

Modern C++ is actually going relatively OK? You may be thinking of the old, pre-C++11 C++?

by nsajko 3y ago

chippiewill 3y ago
Modern C++ _is_ actually a mess to be fair. Overall it's still an improvement on pre-c++11, but when looking at it end-to-end it feels awfully disjointed.
Sankozi 3y ago
If you have a mess and add something to it, you still have a mess, probably a bigger one. To clean the mess you need to remove something (which is really hard in a programming language) not to add something. Selecting and enforcing usage of a subset of C++ is a way to deal with that mess which companies frequently use.
- zozbot234 3y ago
  > To clean the mess you need to remove something Sure, but that's why Carbon and Cppfront are a thing now. These two actively remove stuff from C++. We'll probably see this happen in the Rust community as well once the newer Crab language becomes established. Then we'll have to rewrite everything in Crab, but it will probably be a lot simpler than the Rust rewrite.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- nsajko 3y ago
  Everything is a mess. The universe is a mess. That doesn't make perfectionism a good thing. Besides, the C++ committee does, in fact, remove stuff from the language to clean the mess, just not without due care.
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    They do so once in a blue moon, and only for ideas so spectacularly bad that either they were never implemented or never used by anyone. Those aren't the main problem with C++ mess, the issue is the many small but important details which are deeply embedded into the language since it started as a super-set of C.
flohofwoe 3y ago
C++11 is exactly where the mess started ;) C++ releases got more frequent since then, but at the same time, more half-baked features slip in that haven't been battle tested in the real world before, or need refinement over the next decade worth of releases (if they can be fixed at all).
rcxdude 3y ago
I don't think that modern C++ is any less messy than old C++. If anything it's more so, as even more difficult conscessions to backwards compatibility emerge. That's not the say the new functionality isn't useful, but I don't think it cleans anything up. Modern C++ is approaching an order of magnitude more complexity than pre-C++11 (which is not surprising if you are adding features but not removing or changing old functionality), and I don't think it's a sustainable increase.

Modern C++ is actually going relatively OK? You may be thinking of the old, pre-C++11 C++?

by nsajko 3y ago

Modern C++ is actually going relatively OK? You may be thinking of the old, pre-C++11 C++?

Modern C++ _is_ actually a mess to be fair. Overall it's still an improvement on pre-c++11, but when looking at it end-to-end it feels awfully disjointed.

Sankozi 3y ago

If you have a mess and add something to it, you still have a mess, probably a bigger one. To clean the mess you need to remove something (which is really hard in a programming language) not to add something. Selecting and enforcing usage of a subset of C++ is a way to deal with that mess which companies frequently use.

zozbot234 3y ago
> To clean the mess you need to remove something Sure, but that's why Carbon and Cppfront are a thing now. These two actively remove stuff from C++. We'll probably see this happen in the Rust community as well once the newer Crab language becomes established. Then we'll have to rewrite everything in Crab, but it will probably be a lot simpler than the Rust rewrite.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
nsajko 3y ago
Everything is a mess. The universe is a mess. That doesn't make perfectionism a good thing. Besides, the C++ committee does, in fact, remove stuff from the language to clean the mess, just not without due care.
- rcxdude 3y ago
  They do so once in a blue moon, and only for ideas so spectacularly bad that either they were never implemented or never used by anyone. Those aren't the main problem with C++ mess, the issue is the many small but important details which are deeply embedded into the language since it started as a super-set of C.

flohofwoe 3y ago

C++11 is exactly where the mess started ;) C++ releases got more frequent since then, but at the same time, more half-baked features slip in that haven't been battle tested in the real world before, or need refinement over the next decade worth of releases (if they can be fixed at all).

rcxdude 3y ago

I don't think that modern C++ is any less messy than old C++. If anything it's more so, as even more difficult conscessions to backwards compatibility emerge. That's not the say the new functionality isn't useful, but I don't think it cleans anything up. Modern C++ is approaching an order of magnitude more complexity than pre-C++11 (which is not surprising if you are adding features but not removing or changing old functionality), and I don't think it's a sustainable increase.