Ask HN: Are any other languages as big as C++?

7 points·codingclaws··10 comments

I've been relearning C++ over the last week and it seems absolutely massive. Do any other languages come close to its size?

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Take a look:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/da/e4/6a/dae46a1cf4550e54aa89...

It's a game of complexity management, in the end there were two strategies - C# -> Absorb the creativity of chip designers in bytecode. - C++ -> Absorb the creativity of chip designers in template code.

E.g. Common Lisp or Ada; it depends on which C++ version you compare, because if you measure e.g. specification size, then there can be a factor two between versions.

What size? Lines of code, Megabytes, kilograms, kilometers?

Building blocks / concepts

what is a building block? A library?

I'd be surprised if npm universe is not >10x bigger than all public c++ libraries combined.

The question is too vague to have any meaningful answer.

I agree it's too tough to define. So I'm just basing this off of vibes. One of my closest friends is a really good C++ programmer, so that's where I'm coming from. I'm not a C++ programmer at all.

I think the C++ standard might be the biggest. Like, just the amount of compiler passes it does and what means when is kind of insane. I shouldn't even have seen that in my life, yet I did. I guess that's what friends are for :')

But the ecosystem of C++ seems quite small compared to others as C++ programmers want to build stuff themselves.

So it depends if you just look at the standard versus the ecosystem.

C#, Java, PHP, JS seem equally massive no?

Certainly not JS, you can learn most features of JS in a year easy. Not what I’ve heard with C++

Define big.

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