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Comment by cheez | Hacker News Reader

> It's a pity that Qt's foundation remains a fundamentally memory-unsafe language like C++.

<Groan> Come on.

C++ takes 1 to 2 years tops to develop good habits provided you either read the effective C++ series or you have a good mentor. Just like any other language. What it sounds like you're saying is that programming languages should not require expertise. Maybe. It can be instructive to look at other engineering disciplines to see how much they rely on fundamental knowledge or how much their tools abstract for them to see how programming will go.

That being said, I do (rarely) run into memory issues when it comes to threading but the last time I had a buffer overrun or anything of that sort was probably years ago. I reckon these threading bugs are easy to create with most languages, except maybe Go.

When C++ adopts a proper module specification, my last complaint about it will be gone (compile times).

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>C++ takes 1 to 2 years tops to develop good habits provided you either read the effective C++ series or you have a good mentor. Just like any other language.

But it's really not like any other language. In most other modern languages, you can write relatively safe code while you're mastering it. You may write unidiomatic code as you're learning, but you're not going to leave integer overflows or (with some modern languages) null pointer errors throughout your code.

So yes, I guess am saying programming languages should not require years of expertise. It's beneficial to have a Python or Go expert around, but you can write perfectly respectable code in these languages after a few weeks if you're an experienced programmer. Even in other paradigms like OCaml and Haskell, I see most skilled programmers picking up idiomatic usage after a few months.

What's idiomatic C++? What's safe C++? It's hard to define, and it's a vast language. C and C++ are fine tools to use if you're already an expert (except for those pesky bugs that bring down Internet security).

But for new language learners, there are thankfully a new wave of safe, type safe languages coming on board.

C++03, sure, but not C++11.

If any C++11 course begins with using raw pointers or arrays, they're doing the students a disservice. There are safe and unsafe parts of the language, the trick is when to use which.

Go, Erlang, etc are all designed to be used for particular purposes. Go may break out of its box because it is a general purpose language, but its core use case is concurrency just like Erlang. I honestly doubt it will because its syntax is ugly, though not as fugly as C++ can be.

I feel like the majority of C++ programmers would support gun ownership, which might say a lot.

One or two years is a lot... Learning python took me a month, maybe. Learning C a few months. Learning Objective-C 3-4 months. Hell, I learned quite a bit of Erlang in two weeks during christmas.

(Although I'm also a big believer in the "10,000-Hour Rule".)

C++ is too complex/powerful.

Bingo. I've learned pretty fluent Go in the course of a month. I've been programming in C++ for years and still feel shaky sometimes.

> What it sounds like you're saying is that programming languages should not require expertise.

No, I think he says that C++ is overly complex and unsafe without a real need for that complexity and unsafety. And it seems that what you define as "expertise" translates to "the developer learned to make up for the language flaws". Expertise should mean having the necessary knowledge to make software quickly and efficiently, not avoiding the language pitfalls. When you have to read so much text in order to use a language correctly, then there probably is some problem in it.

Take a look at Rust, it's aiming for the same niche as C++ while being less complex and giving safety guarantees. And they seem to be having success at that. It's doable.

I recommend you the post that I link below. It tries to explain to a C++ programmer why he should learn Rust. It has modules, generics, green threads and concurrency built in. There's much to love. http://featherweightmusings.blogspot.com.ar/2014/04/rust-for...

I wasn't born knowing C++. I read a couple of books (Effective C++ and TC++PL), kept up with it and I've done fine. Is the real shift that people don't want to read books on programming anymore? Maybe they just want bite-sized tutorials.

You're discussing this issue with people who are learning Go and Rust. At least speaking for myself, I would have been thrilled to have access to Go and Rust programming books -- would have made things much easier.

So that's not the issue.

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