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Comment by polskibus | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain why is this so much better than c++?

Nobody can explain to a dedicated C++ programmer why a new language is better than C++. I have tried for more than a decade many times and all I have ever gotten across has apparently been a "wah wah wah" noise like the adults in Peanuts.

Because C++ is multi-paradigm, all paradigms are possible within it (although they may not be syntactically easy or have reasonable error messages, etc etc). Therefore, either C++ is the obviously the best language (to its partisans) or it is a hellish agglomeration of mutually contradictory confusing crap that takes years to begin to understand (to its detractors). Unfortunately, those two camps each find their position obvious, and seem to be unable to communicate with one another.

std::cout << "This does what??!" << endl;

The problem is that many older timers, like myself, that know C++ since its origins are quite comfortable with it, despite all its warts.

Nowadays I spend my consulting work in Java and .NET land, and actually I favour the Wirth family of languages over C and C++.

However, C and C++ have a big tooling support in the industry, and history shows system programming languages are only successful when backed by OS vendors.

Exactly, writing code in the same language as the OS (and their source examples) is generally the best approach ... based on what you're doing of course.

I was hoping for something more constructive, like "these 3 Nimrod features address programming problems much better than c++". I skimmed through tutorial ( both parts) and failed to see anything extraordinary.

I dunno - I have about 15 years C++ experience, and if anything the better I have become at the language the less I like it...

Having said that any language with a GC is unlikely to supplant C++. I would have thought that anything that could get away with using GC is already not using C++. Ergo what will finally kill C++ in all its final domains is IMO some sort of better C. Maybe Rust, if they sort out their non-mandatory GC.

Having used GC enabled systems languages already in the 90's, I am the opinion it is more a generation issue.

Technology changes fast, but humans take generations to be convinced of something.

Sometimes the only way for something to get adopted is when the luddites no longer have a word to say.

I love this comment.

  std::cout << "This does what??!" << endl;

If you're using namespace std then it's obvious (note that this is considered bad practice), assuming you haven't overridden <<, but otherwise it depends on endl's type and value. Maybe you meant std::endl?

You may also be surprised that "??!" is a trigraph for "|" in case your keyboard doesn't have one. I am not making this up.

Ohhhh... GCC warns about trigraphs, so I tend to forget about them, but wow did I fall for that one.

C++ is a wonderful language for people who like puzzles, and it's also good for making fun of know-it-alls.

> C++ is a wonderful language for people who like puzzles, and it's also good for making fun of know-it-alls.

Except trigraphs are another wart inherited from C (ANSI C section 5.2.1.1 A).

The fact that the C++ preprocessor deals with that trigraph case inside quote marks does not have anything to do with what foobarbazqux said about std::endl.

It compiles down to 'C', which C++ hasn't done since the cfront days.

This is a property of implementations, not languages.

Fair enough.

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