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Comment by keeptrying | Hacker News Reader

I've been using C++ for the last 6 years. Recently I moved to the web group which uses ruby and seriously, I never want to code another line of C++ ever.

I dont feel that way about C though and its probably because of C++'s immense complexity. If everyone on your team has 7+ years of using C++ and most of its features on a day to day basis then I think you have a chance (however remote) of getting a clean maintainable system. If not you get a good ugly mess.

(And yes I've created a few myself, while learning this language :)

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Do you really think this is a fair comparison? Web dev has never been C++'s strong point. I could as well say, "so, I've been using Haskell for desktop and console gaming. After 6 years, I moved to C++ and man, I never want to code a line of Haskell again." Because it's a completely inappropriate language choice.

Also re: maintainability. C++ is completely maintainable, and built from the ground up for maintainability specifically in large projects.

Don't blame C++ for the sins of Microsoft (managed C++ extensions, DLL HEll, C++ COM interfaces, compiler support classes, 9 different string types). Don't blame C++ for the sins of gcc. At some point we need to distinguish between the (pure) LANGUAGE and the (often politically motivated) TOOLSET.

I don't think actually that C++ as a language is a inappropriate for web dev, but it lacks the great frameworks that more popular choices have (RoR, Django etc).

Agreed. There is no really good web framework for C++. This is a weakness of C++ going forward. I suppose you could do ASP.NET or ASP.NET MVC with C++/CLI...though in that case it would seem C# or VB.NET is indicated...

I am not sure, a lot of convenience of modern web frameworks is made possible using introspection and other runtime facilities, which are too minimal in C++.

I'm not comparing C++ with ruby for webdev. I just said that I moved to a webdev job from a realtime trading job where we used c++. I'm just saying that my mental state of mind at work has become much better because of the change. I'm purely talking about language differences. One simple exaple is the difference in time it takes to code a snippet that iterates over an array of arrays. In c++ this would take me atleast 15 minutes (finding all the types involved, compiles for error checking etc) with no test written. In ruby I cud have everything done in 1 minute.

The better the tool you use the less stress it puts on you the builder.

Don't blame C++ for the sins of Microsoft

Most of those sins were committed specifically to address weaknesses in C++.

A language without a first-class late-binding model is fundamentally broken. Don't blame Microsoft for trying, however ineffectively, to fix it.

It depends on the task. For e.g. client-side applications, Ruby makes deployment painful, since everyone has their own versions of Ruby with different sets and versions of gems. Added to that, a lot of people are not allowed to install the necessary dependencies on work machines. And then, Windows has no such thing at all.

With C++ and Qt on the other hand, it's very easy to write self-contained applications, also with a minimum amount of platform-dependent code.

> It depends on the task. For e.g. client-side applications, Ruby makes deployment painful, since everyone has their own versions of Ruby with different sets and versions of gems. Added to that, a lot of people are not allowed to install the necessary dependencies on work machines. And then, Windows has no such thing at all.

This is quite easy to fix on linux. You compile a your required version of ruby beside the application that needs it.

    /srv/<application>
         src/
         ruby/ <-- install ruby here with the proper flags
         build-ruby.sh <--- custom script to download, build, and install ruby

I've done this as a matter of principle my own server. It allows me to swap out what ruby version I run my app on without messing with the ruby installed on the system.

The bundler project is also trying to the gem problem by bundling gems with your application.

So basically you think mastery of C++ is always 1 year away?

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