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Comment by NotGMan | Hacker News Reader

The problem with any language trying to replace C++ for larger codebases is that it's not half as powerful as C++.

I've often cursed in C# because something that could be done trivially in C++ if impossible and causes the dev to create convuluted C# while it could be trivialy done in C++ due to its very expressive language features.

Those 0.1% of the time that you need those extreme features are what makes or breaks the language in PRODUCTION.

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I've had the exact same experience, but opposite. Tons of things that are trivial in C# take a ton of code in C++ to me. Maybe it's just going from being an expert in one language to a newer language?

This often comes from expecting C# to be just like C++, where-as more complex use cases are often expected to be done in a (sometimes completely) different way there. It's a good idea to try not to fight the language and work with the way it exposes its features.

My experience was just like yours - easy to move between C and C#, or Rust and C#. But attempting C++ implementation was always far more difficult. It was never worth it over just spending extra effort in either alternative.

If GP reply author has C#-specific questions I'd be happy to answer or point him or her in the right direction. C# is a language with strong systems programming capabilities but has its own learning curve.

What are some examples of these C++ features you've missed in other languages?

Zig not having operator overloading makes it suck horribly for writing any kind of vector code. If everyone had to write int a = int_add(int_mul(3, 7), 2) etc there would rightly be a riot, but since they're not 3D coders they just don't give a shit. Too bad, Zig looks great.

Sorry, one more thing to add to this: Andrew Kelley is obviously a genius, and his talk introducing Zig[0] is in my top 10 of all time technical presentations, for many reasons. But I really do wish someone close to him with a passion for how coding is in many ways applied mathematics, would ask him to please have broader algebraic support for basic operations like +, -, * and maybe divide, with their basic dataflow characteristics. Optimal speed for complex numbers vs std::complex out of the box would be attractive.

I understand his point about not wanting to allow every random C++ feature, but in these cases, it isn't a C++ feature, it's language-level basic algebra.

In C++ land, ISPC[1] is often what you use when you want top speed rendering perf on SIMD CPUs, e.g. Moonray project[2]

Please, just go ahead and define a nice clean API for vectors and scalars like OpenCL provides on its beautiful reference cards: https://www.khronos.org/files/opencl-1-2-quick-reference-car...

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv2I7qTux7g

[1] https://ispc.github.io/

[2] https://openmoonray.org/

Final edit sorry: in the end I love C++ and have been learning Rust mainly out of curiosity. Avoiding C++ quirks one can have few problems and a great time.

Once, I wanted to write a C# function roughly like this:

  (T1, ..., Tn) Apply<T1, ..., Tn>((Func<P, T1>, ..., Func<P, Tn>) args)

This is not possible in C# because the language doesn't have variadic generics. Instead, I used runtime reflection and wrote something like this:

  object[] Apply(Func<P, object>[] args)

Although it worked, the downside is that the types T1, ..., Tn are no longer statically known, which means that the function's contract has to be written in comments and the caller has to check them manually. In contrast, C++ has variadic templates, which would allow the compiler to check the types automatically.

>I've often cursed in C# because something that could be done trivially in C++

e.g?

That claim certainly warrants a serious example. Perhaps you mean "something ... requiring maximum performance ..."?

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