Zed Shaw on C++
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* C++ circa 2000 (before mainline g++ could handle Alexandrescuisms) is significantly different from C++ circa 2010, albeit in ways that probably upset Shaw even more (the more central role boost has taken, the more "expressive" templates have gotten, don't call me on any of this stuff).
* C++ std::string is an abomination, but you can always just do what I've done and what lots of other C++ programmers whose code I've read have done: just use char* and a simple string library (or a custom string class).
* Ditto for stream IO, which is a huge C++ misfeature but which is also pretty much irrelevant (I know of no part of the standard C++ library outside of things that explicitly support stream I/O that rely on you using it).
* I don't get the POSIX argument at all; just call the POSIX functions, they work fine. Nobody mandates that you use (say) ACE_wrappers to do systems programming.
* const-correctness may be another misfeature (I know I make fun of it), but the point isn't hard to see: if you take the time to const-correct your code, the compiler will spit out errors that would have otherwise been runtime faults.
Loki is neat, even if it does represent everything that is evil about C++.
However, to support what Zed is saying, Scott Myers (of Effective C++) was astonished about some of the things done there.
C++ doesn't follow the principle of Least Astonishment in any way that I can think of. And that is not good.
One problem with const-correctness is C++ uses "const&" to mean two different things: it could mean either a reference to a persistent object you're not allowed to change, or it could refer to a temporary object which you're prevented from changing because the changes will disappear. The problem is it conflated access control with lifetime. It would have been better if there were a "temp" keyword - although the last thing C++ needs is more combinatorics of type decorators.
On the subject of consts, though, C++ simply enforces const correctness more, but doesn't the same criticism of confusing const apply to pointers in C as well? You can just as easily declare a "const * const" in C as in C++. So I fail to see why Zed Shaw writing something in C gets him away from that "problem", unless he doesn't write const correct C.
If you do like const (which I do) then you can put it in pretty much everywhere, except if you are dealing with a library that isn't "const correct", but then a bit of type casting will save the day.
That's a big advantage of lots of the C++ features - if you don't like them you can often just ignore them.
* Use const everywhere
* Use casts everywhere
The same thing happens if you use const and your libraries don't...
In retrospect, it might have been better to have a keyword for things that can change. This goes equally for Java and "final". Making immutability the default and mutability opt-in makes for fewer bugs and more reliable programs.
Arguably, this is what Clojure does where you have functional, immutable constructs by default with ways to declare things that can change (refs, etc.).
The thing is, this kind of code isn't an exception in the C++ world. C++ is made for problems where performance matters: image processing, compilers, browsers... immutability works for Clojure, but Clojure is a lot slower than C++. It's more of an "enterprise software" language.
The fact that it's C++, where the prototypical user believes that they shouldn't pay for what they don't use just makes things worse. Everything being optional means there can be very few synergies in language or standard library design, because if feature A needs feature B to work, people who want A but not B will complain. C++ "chooses" either by omitting both A and B, or creating some low-level error-prone features and hoping users won't chop off too many fingers trying to build their own incompatible versions of A and B. An ill-designed misfit language is all but required by the dynamics of the situation.
I think it is so interesting the mentality of static typing people. I would much prefer handling the few resulting run time faults than having to stuff with my code with const.
Anyway, there is no guarantee in C++ that something that compiles with all consts in the world will not throw a segfault at run time in the least expected moment...
The beauty of dynamic typing is that it makes the writing of the code easier, which makes development shorter, which gives you more time to thoroughly test your code. After years leading a QA team, I'm convinced that more time testing is always superior to more time writing code, even if the code you're writing is there to stop bugs!
Of course, one problem with C++ (and, to a lesser extent, C) is that many of those subtle correctness issues are direct results of the type system in the first place. Go figure.
For those with a slightly broader perspective and an inquisitive mind, perhaps you should take a look at at the Reason C++ framwork, specially if you have never seen C++ in its most pure uncomplicated OO form.
Reason is a C++ framework that ive been writing for about 8 years, which aleviates many of the sources of pain highlighted in this discussion. Writing code with Reason is much more like using a dynamic language, with a full library like Java or .Net.
It supports raii, but doesnt use exception handling and doesnt bother with const nonsense or over the top inheritance restrictions. In fact pretty much everything in Reason is public and designed to be derived, modified or enhanced.
It has generic programming features, but doesnt force you to write everything as templates (a classic mistake that the standard library makes). For example, you can have an iterator of int's without caring what the underlying container type is, so your code and algorithms can actually be generic, not just infectious templates.
Unlike a lot of C++ frameworks and libraries, its not specifically focused on networking, or a few esoteric template classes or collection libraries.
Reason is a fully featured systems programming framework with a complete interface to all the usual posix api's and everything else you would expect from a modern language. It has strings, regexes, streams, parsers, sockets, threads, filesystem, encryption, encoding, xml, xpath, collections, time and date, sql (mysql, postgress, sqlite), http (client/server), smart pointers, formatting, logging, and much more.
But the features are perhaps not as important as how it is written. It is simple, and very object oriented, everything is designed to work togeather cleanly and obey the principle of least surprise. Just like Python and Ruby, Reason allows you to do a lot in a very small amount of code.
So if your wondering how you can have the simplicity of C, with just the good parts of C++, heres your answer.
* Linus Torvalds : http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/
* C++ Frequently Questioned Answers : http://yosefk.com/c++fqa/
Are there any good passionate pro C++ versus C arguments?
My own view: I'm not in love with C++, but it's not nearly as bad as everyone makes it out to be. Most of the arguments I hear against C++ are the same tired things I've heard hundreds of times. They all have a grain of truth, but nothing so bad as to condemn the language.
Basically, any language with lots of modularity and lots of low level access is going to be big and have lots of features that are problematic in some situations.
No matter how I put it, I fail to see how C++ can be better than C + (Python or Lua or Haskell, with FFI). Is the concept of using 2 languages at the same time so scary?
That's not always an option if you've performance and memory constrains.
We're using Python only for high level scripting purposes.
If you've a performance critical function, where few data goes in, long computation and few data out, then it's perfect to implement this function in C and have a python function calling it.
But if you've a lot of data, then that's not an option. You just can't copy all the data to C and then after computation back to python, it will kill the performance gained by the C function implementation.
But also if you're trying to do complex operations on your application object hierarchy, Python will kill your performance. Only compare the time for a member/property access in Python and C++.
Yes, but it seems to be inevitable. Python + C. Haskell + C would be my choices for large scale modeling/data analysis. For apps involving a GUI, I would like to hear others thoughts.
In all honesty, yes.
But consider this also. The advantage of C++, such as it is, is that the big, harry objects you are creating can call each with just about any calling conventions you chose and you can parameterize them at run time and compile time in whatever crazy way you'd like (pointers, templates, static objects, classes and ponies! (Ponies will only be standardized in C++_2015)). This is why Python, Lua and all each call c/c++ for extensions. But while there are many interesting scripting languages out there, there's no guarantee that any of these languages' calling convention, memory usage and constraints will be what your large objects need. Specifically, to effectively use a particular higher-level language you'd have to know from the beginning that said language's conventions would satisfy your needs from beginning to end.
Add to this the fact that C++ may not be a "good" programming language but that it's not that bad if used with discipline and understanding. The badness of c++ comes from the many, many ways you can shoot yourself in the foot - it still doesn't force to do anything. But how many subtle bugs can creep in if you're sloppy in passing raw pointers to some other language? And using any higher level language will involve forcing yourself to do a number of things that could prove problematic.
Simply false: take a look at Oberon sometime.
C++ is as bad as they say it is. It is horrible, it is the worst language in the world ... except for all the other (a la Winston Churchill and democracy). The horrifical complexifications of C++ are just terrible, yet every one of them has a reason behind it. And also, the horrifical complexities are a bit more optional than the horrifical complexities of, say, Java. There isn't another language that has both the large-scale modularization given by OO and low-level efficiency of direct pointer manipulation and other C features. You get a vast library of available free code and a huge number of available tools to boot.
There is no other language for crafting large-scale, high performance tools. Java and C# can be just as fast but even fast Java has even greater verbosity overhead. And the scripting languages are great yet their resource overhead makes up for their compactness.
C++ is definitely a language of "big design". "Thinking in C++" is a mistake. You should think in your design and implement in C++. Unlike C, C++ seduces people to take the code for the design.
In any case, however flawed, the thing occupies a niche no other language can. I'm sorry.
Objective C?
I often use a paraphrase of the Winston Churchill quote as well. There are probably many better languages for many other applications, however for high performance, cross platform large scale apps C++ is still the only game in town.
Joe's point that all the complexities have reasons behind them is a really good one. I'd suggest reading Stroustrup's "The Design and Evolution of C++" for more information.
• If you're calling a nonvirtual method, you don't have to pay the vtable cost at all, just the cost of passing this. And most methods in C++ are nonvirtual.
• A call through a vtable is typically a couple of indexed fetches and an indirect jump. Objective-C's mechanism involves a hash-table lookup, which is a bit slower.
Then code the performance sensitive parts in C and link it from the language that is best suited to express the solution.
I wish that D1 was oficially killed, and a stable strict subset of D2 ("D1.5") was chosen as a recommended future-proof version.
Anyway, C++ is more like a construction system which can be used to make a bicycle, a semi, or a six-person tandem which could win the Tour De France.
Which is to say it's pretty clunky for a lot of things. But there are still things where both large scale organization and particular low-calls need to coexist - Databases, large graphics programs, etc. It's not impossible to write these in C or Java obviously but I'd still say C++ is cleaner.
So, there are really only a couple of problems:
• if you're Zed Shaw, you apparently want to cut two wheels off an 18-wheeler, and if you're Zed Shaw, you're likely to screw up and choose the drive wheels for your demented sacrifice. You do that, the sucker won't even roll.
• the stupid hatas who judge the race won't acknowledge your achievement. Something about the allowed types of bicycle. Is that analogous to how you can't run Ruby on a microcontroller with 1024 bytes of RAM, maybe? Because you can sure as fuck run C++ on it.
Anyway, direct pointer manipulation has been part of OO environments since the beginning. The purest current incarnation might be SqueakNOS (ever seen an IDE driver written in Smalltalk?) or SBCL's alien, but the most practical one is probably C++. Rust, Golang, and ATS seem like up-and-coming contenders.
Edit: oh, I forgot D. D's been an up-and-coming contender for more than ten years now.
The seriously complex and high-performance ITA system is written in Lisp.
And if you read Coders at Work, some of the criticisms of C++ suggest that the reason behind many of the C++ features is that Bjarne didn't want to say NO.
And I am happy to leave that particular niche of badness to C++ its own self.
But why do people insist on being able to do low and high level stuff in the same language? What's wrong with, say, using Python for high level stuff, and calling into C for low level tasks? C+Python is probably more convenient than C++.
Have you worked on it? Do you know this? Is it all written in Lisp, or are the parts that need high-performance and predictability written in C or C++?
There's a lot of language FUD out there. I say this as someone who owns OnLisp, and has spent a lot of time learning Lisp.
I should have said "there is no other language which gives you the latitude for crafting high performance tools". You can indeed create serious high performance systems in a number of languages. The thing about most languages other than C and C++ is that things written in them tend to inherit their qualities - A system written in Java generally use Java's garbage collector. That works great for a number of things but it's still a constraint.
More of C++'s "modularization" features are optional than in the other languages so you have more latitude for creating your tools than anywhere else.
Of course, you do get the badness too...
There is a point though. C++ encourages obscure "too clever" constructs, and Java encourages excessive verbosity. But in both cases you can decide not to go there.
In C++, you don't have to declare a single class or create a single template.
Many of the reasons are legacy issues though like using dumb linkers and using the C preprocessor rather than a real module system. Templates are just a huge hack: manipulating the text of the source code to simulate generics and then abusing that feature to get meta programming.
One of the great mysteries of life is why there isn't another language that "has both the large-scale modularization given by OO and low-level efficiency of direct pointer manipulation and other C features" yet doesn't make the same mistakes as C++.
By definition, the people who write the "entertaining" rants against C++ have an axe to grind. The people who like C++ just silently use it, and feel no need to write advocacy blog posts for the language. Even if they were to blog about it, it would be about as compelling as someone advocating for their favorite brand of screwdriver. Like it or not, C++ is the incumbent, and it's neither interesting nor fun to read someone advocating for the status quo.
Whenever you find yourself arriving at an opinion about a programming language solely from rants that you read on some dude's blog, please keep in mind that you're probably being most heavily influenced by the very people least qualified to teach you anything useful about the language. The internet is filled with useful articles about C++, but you don't remember those. You remember that Zed Shaw couldn't figure out how const works in C++, and once wrote a funny email about it.
source?
http://librelist.com/browser//mongrel2/2010/7/15/c-verses-c+...
I'm still looking for the part where he doesn't understand how const _works_.
"You sthee const const &const char[const ] is the proper way to make a thruly safe reference to a conthst char array conthst pointer conthst."
See, prime comedy gold there.
Also, 'cause you guys think the internet should be nothing but a massive academic white paper curated by Knuth, so any amount of hyperbole sends you into a literalism hissy fit.
My problem though is it's not the right tool for the job. Simply having access to C level APIs doesn't instantly mean your language is awesome at making servers and operating systems. Especially if that same language can't quite figure out what the hell really happens on a copy, or during an exception, or can't make decent strings and data buffers.
My impression is that there is a very high startup cost with C++ to getting it working on the platforms you want to support and picking the subset that isn't going to screw you. Once you get over the hurdle, the improved memory management (I agree with the post Zed is ranting in response to) starts to pay dividends.
Which part of it do you not like?
Indeed. At my last job, working on trading software, we had around 35 maths or physics PhDs working on a C++ application. A few had personal blogs (cats, children, steam engines, etc) but as far as I am aware no-one there argued on the Internet about which language was best. C++ just doesn't attract self-publicists the way Ruby seems to.
That's a cheap shot ... Linus Tolvards is definitely not the Ruby-type.
And his arguments are sound ... for system programming, C is a much better language because it's simpler, lacks magic, making the pieces of code easier to understand without the bigger context, and it's more portable.
And for application-level programming, why would you chose a language without a garbage-collector?
Not to mention ... stop-the-world garbage collectors have a good reason for doing what they do. They are defragmenting the memory. You get that for free, when in C++ you would have to deal with hell if your app is doing lots of allocations ... see the shit the Firefox devs had to go through to alleviate the problems of heap fragmentation, and its still a problem.
In 32-bit land, it's welcome to OutOfMemoryException because managed code can't allocate a big enough chunk when returning to C#.
No free lunch :)
Either recycle processes often or reserve big enough contiguous chunks in managed code before calling out to the bad C++ code, no amount of good citizenship in managed code will stop the poorly written native code from fragmenting the hell out of your address space.
Side rant: it's part of the reason that my Palm Pre will sometimes just hang for a second at the worst times, such as when I go to answer the phone. :(
For a good overview, read "Uniprocessor Garbage Collection Techniques" by Paul Wilson (check google scholar). Richard Jones's _Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management_ is more in depth.
The problem tends to be that you need to tune it, and even as you have tuned it, you can not promise that under special condition it will fall back to a more primitive collector since the optimality it was tuned for doesn't hold anymore.
I would never argue giving up garbage collection entirely because of these failure scenarios. I would much rather look at moving some critical part of the code out to a language with manual allocation, and let it perform the latency-sensitive bits.
Another mid-ground is to have separate isolate processes (heaps really) that can be stop-the-world collected without blocking each other. Erlang makes great use of this to accomplish "soft realtime", among other things.
There may be reasons to want to mix manual and automatic memory management. If you want to do that, there are language that support it. Like D.
Because your code uses some finite resources other than memory, and you don't want the ability to forget to release said resources when you're done with them and they go out of scope.
I asked why one should mix management of resources, and you answer that one should mix management of resources. But I still don't know why?
For patterns of usage similar to RAII, Common Lisp uses unwind-protect. I already mentioned Disciplined Disciple Compiler that extends Haskell to give static guarantees for following certain rules for resource management.
Why would you bother: RAII only covers some cases for resource management, and most garbage collectors can take an arbitrary long time to collect an object that's no longer reachable. Which is fine for memory, because memory is fungible, but the attached resources, say mutexen, are not necessarily fungible.
Don't the boost guys say that now C++ is the most powerful programming language?
Basically, until you can kill C your language really isn't that popular. It's a fad by comparison.
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/HateC.html
http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/cplusplus_vs_c.html
The guy has some fun rants in general.
Edit: Oh yeah, and this one, responding to Linus' rant.
http://warp.povusers.org/OpenLetters/ResponseToTorvalds.html
Please stop confusing the language with the APIs or the available libraries and features of the language.
This sounds simple, but it's profound: simply because you can do something, that doesn't mean that you have to do it that way.
To use Zed's example, let's say I'm hacking around a lot of strings. What's wrong with rolling a string class, adding a member or two? You only have to carry around a bunch of nonsense if you want to. If you don't want to use templates and strings and such, don't use them.
This is another in a long line of articles that go something like this: We did X in this certain way, and boy did it suck. Therefore all of X is the devil's work and will destroy civilization.
You can put about anything you want in for X. It's like a (oddly enough) template engine for writing blog entries.
You should go through stages in your career, with just about any X. Stage one is that you are ignorant. Stage two is that you've tried it. Stage 3 is expertise. Stage 4 is hate, and Stage 5 is grudging acknowledgement that parts of X are okay for certain situations. You realize that yes, X is done poorly maybe 99% of the time, but lots of smart people worked on it and there are some little gems in there that are useful from time to time.
Looks like Zed is stuck on Stage 4
Throw away the templates, throw away all the library stuff you don't like -- is there a reason to make a class and wrap some things? If so, you can do that in C++. You can't in C. It's a very simple question, and it has nothing to do with any of the things Shaw is going on about.
The fact that it's 2010?
A language and its standard library are theoretically different things, but in any practical sense, the choice to use a language carries with it the choice to use its standard library. Additionally, the way the standard library is usually reflects constraints placed on it by its language. Java, for example, has a verbose and ceremonial standard library, and that's not a coincidence.
There may be a larger argument about whether the various standards bodies have so complicated C++ that it's become unwieldy -- the comment about exceptions in destructors has merit.
But that's not the argument he was making.
Good programmers are good because of the things they don't do. It's the guys who want to use every feature and library that are often the ones creating the disasters the rest of us have to maintain. So yes, the features and such of a language can hurt. But that's true of just about any language save some of the hardcore functional ones -- C++ maybe more so than the rest. Being a coder using modern languages means judicious use of complexity. Simple is almost always better. Which is exactly where he's coming from, he just takes his argument too far.
In fact, one of the things C++ teaches you early on -- or you suffer all sorts of pain -- is when to abstract, when not to, when to use libraries, when not to, and the dangers of frameworks. It's the very fact that it's such a complex monster that forces coders to keep it simple, stupid. You don't get that kind of thing out of the box in something like Java. This is more bad than good in terms of delivering solutions, but it also is not all bad. It has merit because it trains programmers about the kinds of disasters they can make. If you can write good, easily understood and maintainable C++ code, I can trust you with about anything. If the first thing you do is jump in the swamp where all the alligators live simply because you can -- templates, large inheritance trees, etc -- then probably not so much.
C++ has many string types because each string type has its strengths and weaknesses. For instance, QString is a fully-featured and Unicode-aware string written in C++ that I use most of the time.
std::string is good for most things. What are your specific issues with it?
That's less true when talking about C/C++ than other languages. C/C++ are quite often used in embedded systems, which often have problems with dynamic memory allocation, code size, etc. This means that many embedded systems don't use the standard library, or only use portions of it.
The problems is that you usually target a subset of C++, and two different company targets different subsets. This produce fragmentation and is not good.
Can this be solved/simplified? ages ago someone proposed an embedded C++ standard, and we have compilers in the embedded fields that support this stardard. Why it does not succeeds? everybody wanted a different subset of C++.
Yes, you can. Object orientation is a property of the program, not the programming language. Pretty much every time I crack open C now, I'm writing Object-Oriented C.
(Also, immutability is a property of the program, not the programming language. Etc.)
You: language = base syntax + semantics Most: language = base syntax + semantics + common idioms + standard library + popular libraries
P.S. On the subject of format strings vs. cout and the "<<" madness, C++0x's variadic templates will allow a type-safe printf. So hopefully in the future we WILL see C++ move back toward format strings, but without loosing the type safety. It also gives the possibility of instead of having to remember to use %d for ints and %f for floats, we could just use format strings that use {1}, {2}, etc. as format string placeholders, the way C# does. Freeing you from having to specify in the format string what the type is is something C++0x type-safe-printf would allow you to do that you could never do in C.
I'd pretty much agree with Zed's rant, that C++ often isn't worth the bother, unless you have a project that specifically requires C++ features, and you have a development team that can actually write solid C++.
Maybe I'll call this Jonathan's axiom, but if your team doesn't have enough experience to write in a Lisp-y (or any other genre such as ML-y) language, you probably shouldn't be messing with C++ either.
Not many people that say they can write C++, actually can.
The result is that you will rarely find programmers that understand C++ fully. I have seen a lot of awful code that uses C++ as C with classes, badly. Usually, classes and functions have been written with so little understanding of encapsulation that refactoring is painful. And for properly written C++ programs and libraries, it's usually hard to find people to maintain/modify it.
On the other hand, it is also hard to find good ML/Haskell/whatever programmers. And lots of people get away with writing ugly Python or Ruby code.
f() {
LinkedList list;
populate(list);
use(list);
//forget
}
This is triple compounded when you only have to do C++ occasionally. I've never even got close to the point of looking at something like const *const char & and reading it like it was something normal like others seem to do.
That's right on the money. I can find a subset of C++ that I like and that I could program with, but that assumes that I'm not collaborating with someone and that I don't have to use C++ libraries (It's not just the code, it's the APIs, too). The latter is almost worse. I could imagine a company that has some rather strict standards, where the C++ development environment doesn't suck completely. Google's style guide seems to indicate that they might be one of those companies [1]. Much more likely you'd have to work with something like MFC, VLC or the complete boost hodgepodge.
And Zed is right when he's talking about the template meta-programming fad. I haven't seen any project where the pros outweighed the cons. And yes, I've read Alexandrescu.
People often say that you need all those features to build large applications. Which reminds me a lot of the "Doctor, it hurts when I do like this!" joke…
[1]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x...
Apart from very crappy compiler support (looking at you, Microsoft) I really liked the STL. It's simple enough (maybe a bit too simplistic).
Template meta-programming is a whole 'nother deal. It's like the rabid daughter of an unhappy marriage between Lisp's macros and Perl. From some angles, she looks rather enticing. Then she bites down on your crotch.
However, if I had not been given the style guide and a more experienced reviewer to tell me right from wrong, I would be incredibly frustrated with the language. C++ is complex enough that a book probably isn't enough - you either need a mentor-type person or a very clean open source project to study.
[1]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/cppguide.x...
In other words, C++ is great until something else has to call it. Then you're hosed and end up wrapping everything in C anyway.
The problem with V8, as with almost anything, is it doesn't support well threading and its GC can be a bit unpredictable like any other automagic memory management interpreter. But even so, there are ways to control it.
I certainly relate to what you wrote because I used to be a C++ dev in mid-90s (wintel, shivers.) But if you have some time, have a look at V8 for developers. It rocks. Also the newsgroup has a great community.
http://github.com/dennisferron/LikeMagic
Currently there is only an Io backend, but the library is designed so that the same C++ bindings can be used with multiple different backend languages. It's like Boost::Python on steroids.
And there is also Boost.Python.
It's not exceptional because nothing of the points he raises are anything but a re-re-rehash of the same old tiring arguments that have been raised against C++ for 15 years or more.
It's not good because the examples he makes are straight up wrong or so vague as to be useless. His 'const' example is jibberish and the line about adding two integers with templates doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I guess the response to this would be that these points were exaggerations, mere literary style figures, which is fine. But it does take away from the quality of it as a serious post.
And finally it's not a critique. A critique implies some level of sophistication, an honest attempt to understand something and providing well thought-out arguments against the trade offs that were made in the design, or different viewpoints on fundamental issues. This is just a rant, touching on some of the more superficial shortcomings of C++ that are easily worked around and that for the most part haven't hampered tens of thousands of C++ programmers to use the language successfully for 20 years. A rant, yes. Venting, OK. But a critique, this is not.
Probably just a tongue in cheek comment, but I wonder what he meant.
"LISP" is a convenient red-herring to throw into PL diatribes; it shows the speaker has some authority since he is "aware" of Lisp, and the glowing and mystical connotations that this, vague, awareness carries.
Learn CL inside and out, not because you want to be a better programmer, but penning "Lisp is a Ghetto", if you get it right, will guarantee your name echoes in the hallways of hacker heaven long after we're both gone.
After my C++ period, I did a major project for myself and just used C - like a breath of fresh air after C++
In all my years using C++, I think that the only good applications where C++ made sense was in Nintendo and PC game development at Angel Studios and some VR development for Disney and SAIC. Everything else that I did in C++ should have been done in different languages.
There is a whole entry in Exceptional C++ Style (or another Herb's book) that says how much std::string sucks and how you can write an equivalent extremely quickly.
Anyway, don't like std::string ? You can use std::vector in place very easily, that's a well known trick (thanks to the guarantee that &v[0] returns a pointer to the data if v is a vector).
He talks about references but he seems to ignore the capability of C++ to offer perfect forwarding which enables you to greatly increase performance and memory usage and that's very difficult to mimic in pure C.
There's a lot to write about inaccuracies in this post actually, but what the point? People who hate C++ will discard them and people who love it already know it.
I tire of reading posts from people who didn't like a language for whatever reason and try to rationalize it.
C++ OO can be done to really abstract the application but still be very manageable and simple. Also C++ is a game industry cornerstone. I think game code in C is actually harder to consume that game code in C++.
C++ brings a lot of heavy-weight machinery to the table but the best part is that you don't have to use it. If you just want to write C but desire templates to reduce the amount of writing you need to do then so be it, write C-with-templates!
My big beef with the language is mostly due to the legacy crud it is saddled with in the C preprocessor. Many of the build time issues I find myself suffering with are because of people, for example, including Windows.h a) in the first place and b) not defining WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN. Junior (and senior, for that matter!) developers seldom know how to properly structure their code so that their iteration times don't plummet.
I constantly get teased by friends about my british spelling s of common words.
I understand that the language cannot express it, and that's why other languages (such as lua) do it the right way - immutable strings all the way, or at least by default (NSString)
If you have some reasonable self-control, it is quite reasonable to use C++ as a small superset of C.
Qt, wxWidgets, LLVM, boost
Hopefully we have IncrediBuild at work, and we don't have to deal all the time with such huge frameworks.
And most exception problems are solved with RAII. If you're using RAII, then you won't have memory leaks when exceptions arise.
Oh noes! I have to handle 10 requests a second!
Take a look at the SWENG-gamedev mailing list for some of the performance issues that people face in games and game tools.
/pissing-contest
Note: obviously this is not an argument against C instead of C++. It's more to forestall the meta-discussion.
Lately, I've been using [Jansson](http://www.digip.org/jansson/) for JSON support in C. Wonderfully simple and fast. Also, [zeromq](http://www.zeromq.org/) for everything: logging, sockets, messages. Hoorah. F@&# yeah.
Why is it that C programmers bitch about C++, but C++ programmers don't bitch about C?
FtFT! :)
The novice programmer looks at the code and sees bit, bytes, pointers and functions. The advanced programmer looks at the code and sees class hierarchies, design patterns and frameworks. The master programmer looks at the code and sees bit, bytes, pointers and functions.
Before mastering C, bits are bits, bytes are bytes and pointers are pointers. While learning C, bits are no longer bits, bytes are no longer bytes, and pointers are no longer pointers. After mastering C, bits are once again bits, bytes are once again bytes, and pointers are once again pointers.
One of the best examples is Informix RDBMS which was acquired by IBM in 2000. And the second best is... JVM. ^_^
2005 called, they want their joke back.
#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
typedef std::vector<std::string> Strings_t;
Strings_t split(const std::string& string, char onChar)
{
Strings_t splitted;
size_t lastSplit = 0;
for (size_t i = 0; i < string.size(); ++i) {
if (string[i] == onChar) {
if (lastSplit != i)
splitted.push_back(std::string(string, lastSplit, i - lastSplit));
lastSplit = i + 1;
}
}
if (lastSplit != string.size())
splitted.push_back(std::string(string, lastSplit, string.size() - lastSplit));
return splitted;
}
int main()
{
Strings_t strs = split("$$qqqq$$$w$$$eee$$a$d$$$$$", '$');
for (Strings_t::const_iterator s = strs.begin(); s != strs.end(); ++s)
std::cout << *s << "\n";
return 0;
}The point is: in C++, there are so much things.. It's like a fuckload of thousand of features to satisfy everyone. How the fuck can there be no split? Ruby, split, python, split, java, split, php, split, C# split, C++ -your-20-lines-function-which-only-support-splitting-on-a-char-but-not-on-a-string.
Edsger Dijkstra is Masahiko Kimura
John McCarthy is Yip Man
Paul Graham is Bruce Lee
Steve Jobs is Fedor Emelianenko
Linus Torvalds is Mauricio Rua
Bill Gates is Brock Lesnar
Steve Ballmer is Eric Esch
David Heinemeier Hansson is Anderson Silva
Guido van Rossum is B.J. Penn
Sergey Brin is Antônio Rogério Nogueira
Lawrence Page is Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira
Yukihiro Matsumoto -> Kazushi Sakuraba
Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Rob Pike -> Royce, Rickson, Renzo Gracie
Joel Spolsky -> Tank Abbot
Bjarne Stroustrup -> Matt Hughes
RM Stallman -> Ken Shamrock
Steve Wozniak -> Mark Coleman
Rasmus Lerdorf -> Jon Fitch
Don Stewart -> Art Jimmerson
And now I have tea to clean off of my monitor and keyboard.