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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

Fact 1, the article doesn't mention Rust a single time.

Fact 2, mostly safe systems programming languages exist since ESPOL (1961), 10 years older than C, and with a great linage of attempts of safe systems programming outside AT&T walls, so plenty of alternatives are available

So as someone with more than 10 years of C and C++ experience, among other programming languages, before focusing on Java and .NET, I find these kind of articles valuable because they are the proof there isn't such thing as the 10x C developer that never does mistakes.

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I feel you're missing my point. The article doesn't mention rust but my comment was phrased in the context of the current rust craze on HN.

As I said, I agree with you and the author that all of us do inevitably make mistakes. I also agree that the c-family of languages makes it somewhat more easy to shoot yourself in the foot in a bad way than others. I'm not saying innovation on safe languages is bad, or that using safe languages is bad.

My disagreement with you and the sibling is probably on the point of whether one can learn something useful about the limitations and pitfalls of c-family languages by reading a single-page all-opinion post about it. You and the sibling appear to believe so, I do not. I don't think we will come to a complete agreement on this, but I certainly understand and respect your and sibling's view.

The main issue I have found out during all these years of advocating safe practices in C and C++, specially among C developers given that the C++ community does care about type safe programming, is that they land in deaf hears.

Currently, writing blog articles re-explained what is bad and should be avoid seem a waste of effort, given that even respectable researchers like DJB get ignored.

There's a broader question of when to investigate a technology yourself versus learning from others. A new programmer could spend ten years programming in [some language] or they could learn from other people to avoid it, and possibly save themselves a lot of time. Yes, that means you're just following the bandwagon, but sometimes that's efficient.

I would share the link, though, rather than making my own assertions, and be open to other arguments from more experienced people.

There is a big difference between modern C++ (C++11 ff.) and even the most current iteration of C. The two languages might have been quite similar back in the day when "C with classes" was created, but they have diverged significantly since then. Therefore, I think it is wrong to consider C a "proper subset" of C++, as often is claimed, or even to treat them as equals.

In other words, the real fallacy of the original post is throwing C and C++ into one pot, as if it were all the same - something I consider could not be further from the truth, even back in the C++98 days. A part of that problem is that persons having a (possibly incomplete) understanding of only one of the two languages (on top) believe they can apply that understanding to the other language, too, without having to learn the correct idiomatic usage of the other [1]. And that situation is made even worse by posts that claim to only have to point out some "gotchas" you need to be aware of to understand the other language, particularly coding in C after picking up some C++. Just to name the most critical changes in C++ over C: RAII, abstractions (objects/polymorphism/templates/generics), I/O, error handling, and namespaces/encapsulation. However, not even keywords work the same (fe., `const` and `typedef`). Finally, when C code breaks, it typically is closely related to one of those features that would have tooling in C++ to avoid the issue (in particular, containers to avoid resource leakages in connection with more advanced error and I/O handling techniques).

In other words, I pretty much agree with the GP about the hyperbole of the linked blog entry, and would only let the original post "stand" if it had some kind of significant `C != C++` distinction. I can agree with anyone who thinks that coding in C is probably a Bad Idea today unless you must due to maintaining legacy code-bases, while I think that C++11 has greatly changed the issues you have to look after when coding in C++, making it a lot more safer - and IMO quite fun - to use.

[1] https://olvemaudal.com/2011/10/10/deep-c/ (note that all C++ issues in the post can be avoided by using proper modern C++, like "naked" `new` usages and such)

[minors edits after the post for spelling corrections and readability - but no semantic changes]

I kind of agree with you, back in the day during the C vs C++ flamewars, I was always in the C++ side, and still am if you follow my comment history.

However a big part of the problem, which you kind of refer to, when talking about lack of understanding between C and C++ differences is that, at least on enterprise space, many use C++ compilers for writing what is mostly C-like code.

Do you know why most MFC classes have an Afx prefix?

Microsoft created a C++ framework similar to OWL in abstraction capabilities, but the test group of early adopters said it was too high level and they just wanted a thin wrapper around Win32, hence Afx was reborn as MFC. [0]

I like modern C++ very much, and it is true that many of the "modern C++" concepts were already available on C++98, the problem is getting developers to actually use it, specially old school devs when working in companies where CI builds, static analyzers or sanitizers aren't part of the culture.

Which is the situation I see most of the time across many enterprise customers.

[0] http://cs.sookmyung.ac.kr/class/00891/C++/mfc-faq/

I completely agree with you on that take.

However, if you accept that take, I see little chances of convincing management in such a company to switch to a new, fledgling language - even if it were much safer to use. If anything, your hopes might be that you can teach their teams to use modern C++ and accordingly and slowly massage their code-bases into a more up-to-date state...

Ie., (not the least due to those vast code-bases) C++ (and Java) is (are) quite certainly going to stick around for the foreseeable future, like it or not. I don't really see any great migrations coming our way as long as those languages keep updating themselves to reflect the more significant insights from programming language research, even if those updates lag behind by years.

Hence why I mostly focus on Java, .NET and C++, and tend to comment that regardless how great Rust might be, it will take several years for any relevant uptake.

Just to show how bad it is to move those big enterprise ships, only now in 2017 has BMW moved from C to C++14, for their car platform.

https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/succes_failure_autono...

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