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> Much of the world still runs on C But these days, most interesting applications run on C++, which started from the arguably crumbling foundation (from C++'s
by comex 13y ago
> Much of the world still runs on C
But these days, most interesting applications run on C++, which started from the arguably crumbling foundation (from C++'s point of view, not per se) of C, and grew organically over several major revisions into something hideously complex.
This trait of C++ is not a good thing, but the amount of successful software written in it seems to prove that it's not fatal either.
> You can still run applications from nearly 20 years ago on Windows today, in no small part because of Microsoft's persistent focus on compatibility and keeping the basics reliable over that time.
Layers of hacks on hacks to keep old software running correctly is exactly "building on a crumbling foundation", and probably the reason Microsoft is trying to get rid of Win32, having severely limited its availability on ARM in favor of the WinRT APIs. But I'd say the venerable success of Win32 demonstrates that the crumbling foundation works.
- pjmlp 13y agoC++ belongs to my list of languages that I enjoy using, sadly it was build in quicksand foundations due to C compatibility as a way to make it mainstream.
- yawboakye 13y agoAdd JavaScript. Super crappy but its ubiquity for web scripting is really saving it some real bashing. When we finally have options, we'd relish in our freedom and say what it was like to work with badly written programming languages.
- bad_user 13y ago> This trait of C++ is not a good thing, but the amount of successful software written in it seems to prove that it's not fatal either. That depends. It could also be argued that our current tools are limiting what we can accomplish and at some point we'll need a revolution, otherwise we'll hit a ceiling, just like when concrete replaced the need to carve and place rocks on top of each other. For example living organisms are way more adaptable, more self-healing than anything we've ever built. Our own body should be a text-book example of massive parallelism involving trillions of independent agents that cooperate with each other. In particular, the process of wound healing that happens when you cut yourself is quite fascinating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wound_healing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wound_healing If we wanted to simulate the human body, or at least the human brain, since that's the most interesting part, somehow I'm not seeing C++ in that picture.