6 ms·

What, if anything, have we learned from C++? [video]

63 points by edmccard 12y ago

le_meta 12y ago
that freedom is a long term solution
m-j-fox 12y ago
I guess we learned not to do it again.
- Paul_S 12y ago
  Not to do what exactly?
  - cratermoon 12y ago
    Take a very low-level system programming language, add some OO syntax, then have someone who is avowedly anti-OO* add generics and templates, and then unleash it on hordes of junior programmers. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stepanov#Criticism_of_OOP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stepanov#Criticism_of...
    - Paul_S 12y ago
      None of these is inherently wrong and "unleashing a programming language on junior programmers" is a a bit of a cliche that can be levelled at any language. I get to maintain some nasty c++ code at work that was two decades in the making under a succession of (at least) two separate teams and is some freakshow of cautionary tales with occasional comments in Russian for comedy relief. And I still think c++ is one of the greats and will be around (and alive) in 30 years' time and I'm apprehensive of people painting it as some cautionary tale.
      - cratermoon 12y ago
        Individually they are defensible. In combination, the attempt was full of leaky abstractions that led to violations of the Principle of Least Surprise. In addition, going to a given shop, you never know exactly which subset of all the possible C++ subsets are in use. In that sense, there's no single language called "C++". But yes, I admit the 'unleashed on junior programmers' was a bit of a cheap shot.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
angersock 12y ago
"I wish we were in a field with genuine professionalism, but I don't see much sign of it."
vardump 12y ago
I don't think I need to say C++ has been used to build great things. The web browser you're using is very likely built in it. But it's also been the security nightmare of the century. And been used to build the most horrible messy codebases in existence. C++ encourages coding style that leads to very complicated execution flow. Multiple inheritance. What's the actual concrete method this thing is going to call? Fire up the debugger and set a breakpoint... Operator overloading. Yes, there are good uses for it. Like math code. Or some container implementations. Unfortunately it's often just hiding what's really going on or worse, bugs. Yeah, you're so clever overloading /-operator for building file paths... Exceptions - there to provide untold number of possible execution paths making a typical C++ program flow nearly impossible to comprehensively understand. Exceptions seem to discourage from actually handling the errors as opposed doing something about it at the call site. There's often little you can do five nested calls above, where the exception is caught. Handling means almost always a some sort of logging function or user notification, not actually doing something about it. It's easy to forget it's not only about resource management. Side effects matter too! RAII doesn't undo IO. Those features hide bugs and make C++ maintenance a true challenge. Of course one can earn a steady income writing C++...
- jleader 12y ago
  You say C++ has "been used to build the most horrible messy codebases in existence". There are two kinds of programming languages: those that have been used to create horrible messy codebases, and those that haven't been widely used.
  - vardump 12y ago
    So true.
  - NAFV_P 12y ago
    > There are two kinds of programming languages: those that have been used to create horrible messy codebases, and those that haven't been widely used. I think Bjarne's original statement, "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses" [0], has been widely paraphrased. [0] http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
tagrun 12y ago
Ken Thompson on C++ and Stroustrup: >It certainly has its good points. But by and large I think it’s a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and it’s just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually exclusive. Everybody I know, whether it’s personal or corporate, selects a subset and these subsets are different. So it’s not a good language to transport an algorithm—to say, “I wrote it; here, take it.” It’s way too big, way too complex. And it’s obviously built by a committee. > Stroustrup campaigned for years and years and years, way beyond any sort of technical contributions he made to the language, to get it adopted and used. And he sort of ran all the standards committees with a whip and a chair. And he said “no” to no one. He put every feature in that language that ever existed. It wasn’t cleanly designed—it was just the union of everything that came along. And I think it suffered drastically from that.
- StephenFalken 12y ago
  Very interesting interview where he also said: > I would try out the language as it was being developed and make comments on it. It was part of the work atmosphere there. And you’d write something and then the next day it wouldn’t work because the language changed. It was very unstable for a very long period of time. At some point I said, no, no more." > In an interview I said exactly that, that I didn’t use it just because it wouldn’t stay still for two days in a row. When Stroustrup read the interview he came screaming into my room about how I was undermining him and what I said mattered and I said it was a bad language. I never said it was a bad language. On and on and on. Since then I kind of avoid that kind of stuff."
slashnull 12y ago
"People scream about efficiency, go on the web you read "efficiency efficiency efficiency!". No. They will actually love things that, that however slow, [will make] things convenient for them. And most researchers, really, when it comes to it, love inefficient languages that make it easy to write a n academic paper about how to improve it. Um, let's see, language myths: we want a language for writing reliable code. No! Most programmers, most of the time, scream in horror when they have to do something extra to for reliability, maintainability, safety, all the good stuff" All hail ultraliberal interpreted properties-based dynamic languages!

63 points by edmccard 12y ago

le_meta 12y ago

that freedom is a long term solution

m-j-fox 12y ago

I guess we learned not to do it again.

Paul_S 12y ago
Not to do what exactly?
- cratermoon 12y ago
  Take a very low-level system programming language, add some OO syntax, then have someone who is avowedly anti-OO* add generics and templates, and then unleash it on hordes of junior programmers. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stepanov#Criticism_of_OOP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Stepanov#Criticism_of...
  - Paul_S 12y ago
    None of these is inherently wrong and "unleashing a programming language on junior programmers" is a a bit of a cliche that can be levelled at any language. I get to maintain some nasty c++ code at work that was two decades in the making under a succession of (at least) two separate teams and is some freakshow of cautionary tales with occasional comments in Russian for comedy relief. And I still think c++ is one of the greats and will be around (and alive) in 30 years' time and I'm apprehensive of people painting it as some cautionary tale.
    - cratermoon 12y ago
      Individually they are defensible. In combination, the attempt was full of leaky abstractions that led to violations of the Principle of Least Surprise. In addition, going to a given shop, you never know exactly which subset of all the possible C++ subsets are in use. In that sense, there's no single language called "C++". But yes, I admit the 'unleashed on junior programmers' was a bit of a cheap shot.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

angersock 12y ago

"I wish we were in a field with genuine professionalism, but I don't see much sign of it."

vardump 12y ago

I don't think I need to say C++ has been used to build great things. The web browser you're using is very likely built in it. But it's also been the security nightmare of the century. And been used to build the most horrible messy codebases in existence. C++ encourages coding style that leads to very complicated execution flow. Multiple inheritance. What's the actual concrete method this thing is going to call? Fire up the debugger and set a breakpoint... Operator overloading. Yes, there are good uses for it. Like math code. Or some container implementations. Unfortunately it's often just hiding what's really going on or worse, bugs. Yeah, you're so clever overloading /-operator for building file paths... Exceptions - there to provide untold number of possible execution paths making a typical C++ program flow nearly impossible to comprehensively understand. Exceptions seem to discourage from actually handling the errors as opposed doing something about it at the call site. There's often little you can do five nested calls above, where the exception is caught. Handling means almost always a some sort of logging function or user notification, not actually doing something about it. It's easy to forget it's not only about resource management. Side effects matter too! RAII doesn't undo IO. Those features hide bugs and make C++ maintenance a true challenge. Of course one can earn a steady income writing C++...

jleader 12y ago
You say C++ has "been used to build the most horrible messy codebases in existence". There are two kinds of programming languages: those that have been used to create horrible messy codebases, and those that haven't been widely used.
- vardump 12y ago
  So true.
- NAFV_P 12y ago
  > There are two kinds of programming languages: those that have been used to create horrible messy codebases, and those that haven't been widely used. I think Bjarne's original statement, "There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses" [0], has been widely paraphrased. [0] http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that http://www.stroustrup.com/bs_faq.html#really-say-that

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

tagrun 12y ago

Ken Thompson on C++ and Stroustrup: >It certainly has its good points. But by and large I think it’s a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and it’s just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually exclusive. Everybody I know, whether it’s personal or corporate, selects a subset and these subsets are different. So it’s not a good language to transport an algorithm—to say, “I wrote it; here, take it.” It’s way too big, way too complex. And it’s obviously built by a committee. > Stroustrup campaigned for years and years and years, way beyond any sort of technical contributions he made to the language, to get it adopted and used. And he sort of ran all the standards committees with a whip and a chair. And he said “no” to no one. He put every feature in that language that ever existed. It wasn’t cleanly designed—it was just the union of everything that came along. And I think it suffered drastically from that.

StephenFalken 12y ago
Very interesting interview where he also said: > I would try out the language as it was being developed and make comments on it. It was part of the work atmosphere there. And you’d write something and then the next day it wouldn’t work because the language changed. It was very unstable for a very long period of time. At some point I said, no, no more." > In an interview I said exactly that, that I didn’t use it just because it wouldn’t stay still for two days in a row. When Stroustrup read the interview he came screaming into my room about how I was undermining him and what I said mattered and I said it was a bad language. I never said it was a bad language. On and on and on. Since then I kind of avoid that kind of stuff."

slashnull 12y ago

"People scream about efficiency, go on the web you read "efficiency efficiency efficiency!". No. They will actually love things that, that however slow, [will make] things convenient for them. And most researchers, really, when it comes to it, love inefficient languages that make it easy to write a n academic paper about how to improve it. Um, let's see, language myths: we want a language for writing reliable code. No! Most programmers, most of the time, scream in horror when they have to do something extra to for reliability, maintainability, safety, all the good stuff" All hail ultraliberal interpreted properties-based dynamic languages!