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Ask HN: Is C++ still worth learning?

• iends 13y ago
  Learning a language is all about your goals. Do you want to work in a domain where execution time is the most important factor, even more than developer time? Games, finance, system software, etc often use C++ because speed and control over memory usage far outweighs the benefits of faster development time in other languages.
  • w4rh4wk5 13y ago
    My main interest lies in game development. To be a little more precise in game engine development. I'm studying computer science at the moment and I plan to work towards such a job after graduation. And afaik most game engines are written in C++ because of performance and memory management.
    • camus2 13y ago
      > And afaik most game engines are written in C++ So why the heck are you asking the question ? you already know the answer.
      • shervinafshar 13y ago
        I don't understand why OP is being heckled here. Obviously, the post wasn't a survey. The intent is to raise discussion and collect opinions.
    • tokenrove 13y ago
      Have you read the source some modern game engines? Doom 3 is an interesting example (a bit old now, of course) because it's not particularly C++-like; IIRC from the last time I looked at it, C99 would do effectively everything it needs. This is not uncommon in the game industry. The game industry uses C++ because most of it is consistently about ten years behind the rest of the industry (remember how long it took them to switch from asm to C? and then from C to C++) -- the charitable viewpoint for this is that the industry is conservative; this is also a consequence of the toolset in the embedded world. Any natively-compiled language with a good compiler will produce pretty fast code without too much work, but to get really fast code in any language, you really need to know what the compiler is doing and be able to tweak it from the language; writing really fast code in C++ requires about as much work and as much thought (but less knowledge of your target compiler and runtime) as writing really fast code in Common Lisp or Scheme. It's important to note that it's actually easier to write slow code in C++ than in C if you're not careful; C++'s powerful abstractions cut both ways. Unless you explicitly forbid a number features, C++ takes away your ability to look at an isolated block of code and get an approximate "in-head" assembly of it. All that said, if you want to work in the game industry, you need to learn C++, you have no choice. But at the same time, you could be experimenting with building games in newer languages like D, Rust, and maybe more exotic choices like SML using MLton or Gambit Scheme (maybe using Stalin for a final pass). I hope this is helpful.
• wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
  C++ is very much alive and kicking. "Worth learning" - is there an end goal you have in mind?
• fuj 13y ago
  If you ask that, then no, it is not worth learning for you.
• tokenrove 13y ago
  C++11 is a vast improvement, for me, over earlier versions of the language. I still think it's a mess of a language, and the usual caveat applies (no one knows all of C++ well -- know what subset you're using and be aware of what you don't know), but it can't be dismissed. Should you learn it? There's still a ton of software written in it and it has one of the best compiler ecosystems; for many applications it's one of the only practical options for a production system. Every programmer should know enough C++ to understand templates, RAII, operator overloading, things like that, if only to compare with approaches in other languages. Should you build new systems in it? I would avoid it if possible, but once you learn the language, hey, maybe you'll love it. And if so, there's no shortage of C++ programmers to work with you.
• petercooper 13y ago
  Obviously he's a little biased but Bjarne Stroustrup recently shared some insights about C++ that might be useful in this discussion: http://electronicdesign.com/dev-tools/interview-bjarne-stroustrup-discusses-c http://electronicdesign.com/dev-tools/interview-bjarne-strou...
  • betterunix 13y ago
    I think this sentence embodies the biggest problem with C++: "...abstraction mechanisms that allows programmers to express ideas beyond what I can imagine with no overhead compared to hand-crafted code." This is superficially similar to the Lisp community's "sufficiently advanced compiler," but in C++ it really means that high-level features are thoroughly undermined by low-level concerns (as opposed to just being slow until better compilers come along). Other languages seem to get high-level abstractions right, in the sense of exchanging a constant-factor loss in performance for a large gain in programmer productivity.
    • SamReidHughes 13y ago
      That's a weird thing to say, because C++ has better high-level abstraction facilities than any other mainstream language today.
      • betterunix 13y ago
        Better than C#? Better than Python? I think your definition of "mainstream" might be a little narrow, or else you have a very odd understanding of what makes a good high-level abstraction. Also, why limit ourselves to "mainstream" languages? Once upon a time C++ was not mainstream. Why should we shy away from Lisp, OCaml, or Haskell just because they are not popular? In every discussion about C++ and its technical ups and downs, someone points to its popularity, as if that were some kind of justification. The history of computers is overrun with examples of popular-but-inferior technology.
        • SamReidHughes 13y ago
• betterunix 13y ago
  No; learn C, because there is a lot of C code out there, and then learn a high-level language like Haskell, Lisp, OCaml or Python. C++ is only worth knowing if you need to maintain legacy code; if you are writing new code you should steer clear of it.
  • FooBarWidget 13y ago
    Yeah, I'm sure that Clang, the new compiler that everybody is so fond of, is "legacy code". Oh yeah, let's put Chromium, Firefox, and all of KDE on that list too. As a person who is proficient in both C and C++, I find this constant war ridiculous. Neither languages are obsolete ok? Which one is best for you depends on the circumstances. Stop speaking in absolutes.
    • wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
      And tons of DSP.
    • rtpg 13y ago
      I know people argue that it's not exactly the same, but isn't standards-compliant C accepted in C++ anyways? Why make the distinction if you're going to use a subset anyways.
      • Jach 13y ago
        Incompatibilities Between ISO C and ISO C++: http://david.tribble.com/text/cdiffs.htm http://david.tribble.com/text/cdiffs.htm
    • deleted 13y ago
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  • w4rh4wk5 13y ago
    I am already familiar with C, as well as Python, Go, Java and a few other scripting languages.
    • 13y ago
• simgidacav 13y ago
  Your question is probably driven by the fact there are a lot of languages which allow you a greater level of abstraction. The answer is "it depends" (of course!). If you plan to hack into some kernel source code, device drivers, legacy software, or high performance softwares, probably it's worthy. My advice is: once you learned one language for each type (functional, procedural, object oriented) and a scripting language (python, perl, ruby, ...), then get a project and learn while hacking.
  • 4ad 13y ago
    Kernels and device drivers are written in C, not C++.
    • FooBarWidget 13y ago
      Depends on the kernel. For example a large part of the Windows kernel is written in C++.
      • tokenrove 13y ago
        At least from what I can gather from Pascal's Showstopper (the book on the development of Windows NT), that was against Dave Cutler's wishes, and indeed the main kernel was originally just C; that books documents some of the hassles they have as a consequence of using C++. (And indeed, it strikes me as bizarre that one would use C++ for an OS kernel.)
      • 4ad 13y ago
        Actually the scope of C++ in the Windows kernel is extremely limited (or it was ~4 years ago, when I worked on that particular kernel).
    • simgidacav 13y ago
      > Depends on the kernel. For example a large part of the Windows kernel is written in C++. Exactly. Still yeah, I agree with you (and Linus Torvalds) on the fact C should be used.
    • 13y ago
• tbirdz 13y ago
  I think C++ is still considered the "industry standard" in games programming, for whatever that is worth.
• bstamour 13y ago
  Yes. C++ is one of the few (maybe the only) languages that gives you enough high-level features to be productive, but doesn't do so at the expensive of ruthless runtime efficiency. If you need to squeeze every ounce of juice out of a machine, but still require the ability to create good abstractions, C++ is for you.
• BigBalli 13y ago
  worth is based on expected outcome and necessary investment ==> different for everyone. However, for a quick & dirty answer: no, go with C (much more universal). On another note, if you wonder if you should do, seems like you don't have a reason to... Why are you doing it?
• deleted 13y ago
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• stusmall 13y ago
  Honestly, for me I get way more use out of a mix of C and Java. If I'm writing something complex enough that C++ is helpfully, usually I don't have as an extreme performance restraint. When I do have serious restraints, C has never done me wrong. Usually when I do something in C++ I look back at it and think it would have been easier in either C or a higher level language. With this said, that's just me and the way the world has worked for me. There are tons of applications were C++ is the right answer and C could never fill the bill. If you just want to learn native and low level programming, learn C instead. Its simpler, easier to learn and has more use cases(Linux kernel, some OS-less micro-controllers) So to answer your question, "ehhh... sure. maybe?"
• Symmetry 13y ago
  As the others are saying, it very much depends on what you're trying to accomplish. I'll start off by saying that C is a much, much simpler language than C++ and unless you're looking to make a serious investment it might be better to just learn C, even though C++ adds a lot of genuinely useful stuff. You might consider learning C{,++} if: If you need to interface with hardware at a very low level, such as when you are programming a microcontroller or writing a device driver. You have a reasonably small application and you need the best performance possible. Don't use them because "C++ is fast". C++ is fairly fast by default, but so are many other languages where it's harder to shoot your foot off. Use C or C++ because of the greater scope for optimization in memory layout and other sorts of painstaking optimizations. Learn it because you want to create a library that can be used by many other different languages. Pretty much any language has some method of calling a C function, it's pretty simple. Making calls between languages that have their own garbage collectors is more complicated. Learn it to teach yourself about how your computer works. you could also use assembly language here, but C works well enough. Getting a sense for how other languages work under the covers can help you understand performance trade offs in other languages better.
• jnardiello 13y ago
  Just saying: if you know C and Java (as you mentioned), then C++ is just a matter of syntax. It won't introduce any new concept nor will make you a better programmer. I wouldn't really consider learning it unless you have to use it in any specific context or project. There are so many new, different and more innovative languages out there on which i'd focus.
  • danieldk 13y ago
    It won't introduce any new concept nor will make you a better programmer. Only someone who never used templates or did template metaprogramming would state such a thing ;). C and Java -> C++ is not just a matter of syntax.
• cppbitch 13y ago
  Learn C++? You don't learn C++, you live C++. So for your case, no.
• hrish2006 13y ago
  No. Its not. Its usage is declining.
• camus2 13y ago
  is COBOL still worth learning ? without context , your question is meaningless. I know engineers that make 6 figures salaries maintaining COBOL systems. So it is worth for them and they dont care about hype. give some context. "Is C++ still worth learning for this or that kind of job or field?" is the question you should have asked. Now i would say most programming languages are still built on either C or C++, and a lot of them allow C or C++ extensions,even hipster's nodejs. You cant be an expert on these solutions/languages without knowing the lower level.
• jezclaremurugan 13y ago
  C++ is still worth learning. But if you can - try Go instead. Both solve more or less the same problems, but, Go has the advantage of being designed more recently - and so it has lesser cruft, well designed features, and its easier to learn and master.
• csmuk 13y ago
  Yes if any of the following are true: 1. You do any desktop programming. You will meet c++ along the line somewhere for certain, be it some win32 abstraction, Qt, Wx etc. I'm ignoring apple here for ref. 2. If you're writing high performance software (scientific computing, gaming, trading etc). I can't really see many other use cases that can't be solved either via C or a high level language easily. To be honest I really was indifferent about C++ for years but C++11 seems pretty good so far. I can see it creeping in places where JVM/CLR are being pushed a bit hard and in the systems programming space, but on the basis that some people like myself are still maintaining oooold c++ code, I can't see that being that soon.
  • gngeal 13y ago
    If you're writing high performance software That sounds like a red herring. Can C++ be easily compiled for heterogeneous architectures and distributed systems? Does it support massive concurrency in the Erlang/Go style? Is it easily and efficiently vectorizable the way that APL was once? Somehow I've always felt that C++ can do "anything" at the cost of "being equally bad at everything". Regarding C++11, I really like Rob Pike's comment on how the creators of C++ seem to think that the problem of pre-C++11-C++ was that "it apparently didn't have enough features".
    • SamReidHughes 13y ago
      Go's style is not the same thing as Erlang's style. And the answer is yes, if you're talking about Go's style. Your line about C++ not having enough features is cute-sounding but actually it's anti-intellectualism under the religion of minimalism.
      • gngeal 13y ago
        Your line about C++ not having enough features is cute-sounding but actually it's anti-intellectualism under the religion of minimalism. First of all, it's not my line, it's Rob Pike's line. Second, upon seeing how the C++ people intend to fix deficiencies of C++ by throwing even more features at it, it's very difficult to see it in any other way. Third, the only "anti-intellectualism" I see here is named C++: It's actually symptomatic of certain organizations that instead of trying to see the big picture and really fix things in a systematic way, they "anti-intellectually" hack and tweak and tinker and micro-optimize. For example, IBM has been doing that in the 1960s with their HW architectures before they got their shit mostly together, which is why the ACS project failed, only for it to be rediscovered forty years later, with modern CPUs finally (!) utilizing these ancient but very well working techniques, such as superscalar out-of-order design that will celebrate its fiftieth birthday in a few years. Now, the same breed of people who ditched ACS in the 1960s are apparently in charge of design of mainstream languages. I wonder if we'll survive the next decades in good mental health before enough people realize the same thing again, ditch that crap and start all over again.
• michaelochurch 13y ago
  C++? Yes if you want to work in the games industry or at Google. In general, I'd say no. The niche it fills (high-level features bolted on to a low-level language) is not that useful and it doesn't fill it well. C, on the other hand, is worth learning.
  • SamReidHughes 13y ago
    Then explain why people familiar with C++ choose to use it instead of crippling themselves by limiting themselves to C.
    • tokenrove 13y ago
      That's not universally true. Some people can't give up C++'s sugar once they've become addicted to it, but you also have people like Martin Sustrik abandoning C++ for C. (I would say, moreso, people recognizing where C++ can provide a real benefit and those places where it's unnecessary.)
      • SamReidHughes 13y ago
        C++'s features aren't sugar and using powerful tools is not an addiction.
      • jagawhowho 13y ago
        0 cost generics are a pretty good non-sugar reason to use c++ over c.
• moron4hire 13y ago
  Is Latin still worth learning?
• deleted 13y ago
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• karlherler 13y ago
  I wouldn't say that you ever "learn" c++, it's more a lifelong activity of understanding the intricate details various disjoint concepts and how they interact. I would say that it's a good thing to at least keep an eye on and have some understanding of. If not for anything useful then you can at least experiment with http://libcinder.org/ http://libcinder.org/. I do also find reading the c++ standards committee articles a worthwhile activity just to further my understanding of how things like lambda expressions can be implemented and their impact on other concepts.
• asmman1 13y ago
  Very short and full answer: Yes.
• jpmec 13y ago
  What languages do you already know? What problem are you trying to solve? I would learn C++ if you need to know it to get your job done. Like others have said, C++ is a complex language. Some people don't like it as a "language", some people like all the features it has. But at the end of the day, it is complex to learn and understand. Also you have to think about a lot when programming in C++. You have to think about objects in terms of their life cycle. Compared to a garbage collected language, this accounts for mental overhead that could be applied elsewhere. A couple of other negatives about C++: 1) Its harder to interface than C. 2) It has many different flavors that vary depending on what platform you are on. 3) Up until C++11 it didn't have built-in regex. A couple of positive things about C++ and learning C++: 1) The STL is great, and has patterns that you can apply to other languages. 2) Generic programming to write re-usable code in C++ can be quite fun, and you can learn how the compiler can help you during compile time (+). 3) Learning OOP in C++ can be an artform, and can be fun. There is a lot of bad C++ out there, but there is some very elegant C++ out there as well. 4) You will learn that C++ is not C. You will also learn to chuckle at anyone that writes "C/C++". (Hint, if they write this, then they do not know C++) (+) Note on this point: Some people from the more dynamic languages might poo poo this as not needed, and that in their favorite language you don't need to define types. This is a mixed bag, on one side, that is true and can let good programmers work faster. However, they either have to not test, or perform all tests at run-time. A compiler and linker can tell you much faster if you have done something stupid like call a method that doesn't exist. In a dynamic language, you have to write tests and hope you happened to test that branch of code where you made the mistake.
• julie1 13y ago
  C++ makes you able to write simple tasks in a complicated ways, thus a great asset to the global hidden mission of software industry which is to write code that will seem brilliant but fail in a devilish way. So go for it. “There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.” — C.A.R. Hoare, The 1980 ACM Turing Award Lecture You can also learn more than one langage because they fits domain of excellencies you want to master: - C low level programming (zmq switched from c++ to C because of error handling) - high level portable language that can bind on libraries (python to avoid hispter mac users using ruby) ; - something for concurrency (Go); - R-project for data treatment; - vanilla JS because mixing LISP difficulties with braces syntax is insanely cool; - PHP and Perl to feel with your guts what a wrong language is (hint: it is all about maintainability); - ASM 68000 because motorola 68000 is the most beautiful mix between a good design and implementation and it will make you truly able to build a consistent mental map of what a computer really is; - Tk because 25 years it still is the most portable way of doing GUI and has inspired everyone; - Forth because it is fun to use postscript as a real programming language; ....
  • SamReidHughes 13y ago
    Have you looked at zmq? It should be pretty clear that the developer of zmq is not somebody you should be taking any cues from.
    • julie1 13y ago
      for now I have a system that has been successfully using it for weeks, so I pretty think it works. And yes I have watched the code and found a bug. The clock used in python is mononotonic but may change its frequency and the the time structure is wrong on 64bits architecture there is a cast to signed long long where it should be unsigned long long. So if I can find stuff easily and see bugs, it means to me the code is well architectured and readable.
      • SamReidHughes 13y ago
• protomyth 13y ago
  For myself[1], I will be going back and picking up modern C++. I have some stuff I want to write that I think it would be a good fit. 1) I currently do Obj-C (apps) and Perl (scripting & tools)
• zmanian 13y ago
  Things to consider about C++ -C++ is very large language and the standards committee works hard to make it larger every day. Every organization makes use of a subset of C++ but likely a different subset. C and Java are much smaller languages. As John Carmack says "Any abstraction that compiler will accept will eventually make it into a sufficiently large codebase" -Familiarity with an organization/codebase specific subset of C++ is necessary for a number of significant career paths in software development. Chromium and related technologies, Google's core infrastructure, Java runtime engines, game engine developement etc. I fundamentally don't think you should try to "Learn C++". If you are interested in career path the has C++ as a prerequisite. Learn the C++ style of a similar OSS project.
• SamReidHughes 13y ago
  Just look at the blatherized aphorisms made by anti-C++ people here and then ask whose opinions are worth listening to.
• leal 13y ago
  There are applications today where C++ is still the best choice. For high complexity, performance critical applications (as csmuk mentions - game engines, trading, network software, but also high performance compilers and VMs) no other language has quite the mix of performance, available abstractions, and maturity. The question is then, if these you're into writing these types of applications. If you're not, then IMO, C++ is not worth learning. In the words of Alan Perlis: "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" The main contributions of C++ is implementing abstractions well known in other languages - OO, generic programming - in a C-like syntax. C++ is not the best language to learn to understand these concepts - there is too much low level complexity to deal with. But if you're looking for language with the performance of C and with available high level abstractions, C++ is still the best choice today.
• Jach 13y ago
  I wouldn't learn it unless you're interested in learning new languages already or suspect you'll wind up at a job where it's necessary. If the former, that's a long road and my suggestion there would be to first learn languages that will make you think about programming differently and second learn languages that make programming fun -- C++ is neither, though perhaps for some people they start thinking "I don't want to program anymore", and I guess others who are exposed to C++11's new features for the first time in any language can get excited about them... If you are going to learn it, learn it in full. Understanding most of http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/index.html http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/index.html ought to be a requirement to put "C++" as a separate item from "C" on your resume; people who put "C/C++" on their resume make me more likely to believe they only know C++ as a kind of super-set of C and they will likely program C++ code in a very Cish style, also they will likely make more mistakes caused by a faulty assumption that C++ does the same thing C does -- like a keyword means the same in C++ as it does in C. A lot of places have sane requirements and restrictions on what you can do in your C++ programs there. e.g. http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.xml http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x... But to understand the decisions you probably need to learn about the thing being discussed... And then learn why other programmers want the thing to be enforced or restricted so much. A lot of times it's just so even C++ programmers whose C++ knowledge is summarized as "C with classes!" can still be effective programmers. I wouldn't suggest learning C++11 specifically. Learn C++98, then learn what new features C++11 has on top of that (there aren't that many).
  • alok-g 13y ago
    >> "C/C++" on their resume make me more likely to believe they only know C++ as a kind of super-set of C and they will likely program C++ code in a very Cish style Could "C/C++" on the resume also not mean they see C as a subset of C++, they program C++ code in C++ish style, but also feel comfortable with C? (I understand C is not a true subset anymore, but it seems close enough to allow me to do programming in C every once-in-a-while I need to.)
    • Jach 13y ago
      Sure, it could mean that... It could also mean the person was just lazy and is actually a master of both. Actually I think the pessimistic interpretation is that they know one in terms of the other (typically whichever came first in their lives) and know neither very well... I just tend to run into more people who fall into the "pretty good with C programming and thinking style and use C++ mostly as C with classes" bucket than the "pretty good with C++ and can confidently(!?) use C" bucket. For a shaky analogy, C is to C++ as freshman algebra is to freshman calculus...
• vadivlkumar 13y ago
  Yes at the least to understand the values of such high level programming's productivity boost that you will miss. I always tell to my peers to learn different languages to understand what you miss in one or another. You can write well performing code if your design is right.
• arithma 13y ago
  C++ is large and has lots of history and legacy. There isn't anything you can do in C that can't be done better in C++. I enjoy C++, and learned as the language right after Visual Basic 6 at around 2008. You can easily imagine how things "could" be implemented on top of C in C++. The most difficult thing about C++ is passing over all the negativity hyped by the "other" camps, and then learning from the right people (who will tell you what things have gone wrong and have their own philosophies of using the language). The new standards of the language feel like they're more scripting than erecting object oriented cathedrals. I enjoy reading topcoder submisssions and editorials on their SRM problems. I believe it can give a perspective on how C++ can be used in a terse and narrow domain. TL;DR: At any place where C makes sense, C++ has a lot to be offered to be ignored. Try to consider the source when checking criticism. Find legitimate examples of C++ from OSS and topcoder SRM submissions.
• codex 13y ago
  Use C++ if you're interested in writing high level abstractions that resonate with the underlying hardware. Assembly and C map very closely to actual hardware, but don't have a very high abstraction capability. Haskell, Erlang, Python, LISP, etc. have abstractions up the wazoo, but there's big box labelled "magic" between what you write, and what gets run. That's because it's easy to construct systems which have nice theoretical properties, but are completely incongruent with shipping chips, requiring a black box in the middle that is doing who-knows-what kinds of translations, continuously. Intel will never ship a CPU which natively executes functional code, for example, because fundamentally computation is an imperative process. You have information (entropy) and you want to turn it into a useful result; that involves moving bits, comparing them, performing simple computations on them, and iterating. That's what chips do, and that's what C++ does too--the fundamentals--but with more abstractive power than C when it is needed. If you think that being both "in tune" with the hardware and achieving high abstraction in a single language is difficult, you're right--and C++ is difficult to learn and use. There is no free lunch there. But the results speak for themselves. Almost every single piece of software I use on a daily basis is written in C++.
• pkrumins 13y ago
  Learn it just for the fun of it!
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 13y ago
  It certainly is for the following reasons. 1) Offers high-level abstractions at high-level performance 2) Does not restrict you to 1 paradigm. 3) Available from multiple vendors on multiple platforms all backed by an ISO standard 4) You used a program written in C++ to write this post