Modern C++ as a Better Compiler | Hacker News Reader

Modern C++ as a Better Compiler

moderncpp.com

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Note that here "Modern C++" means "the header-only C++ library written by Kenny Kerr which he named Modern."

http://moderncpp.com/about/

Which notably has not actually been released yet.

Which makes me feel I've spent the energy reading about the potential vaporware. Ugh.

The author writes:

http://kennykerr.ca/2014/08/29/a-modern-update/

"I have started using it myself and am really enjoying the experience but it has a few rough edges that I need to work on before I can make it more widely available"

So he has the site about it, writes the articles about it... and it works only for him.

> The C++/CX compiler....use a weird little hat

> What does the hat do? Well nothing.

Actually the hat is drastically different than a normal pointer. It's managed/garbage collected pointer[1]. Which is actually pretty smart to introduce garbage collection functionality without breaking legacy code.

I watched the first code and he doesn't show him actually compiling the sample he typed up. Instead it kind of cuts to a fullscreen version of some app. My vote is that this library doesn't actually exist.

[1] - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/yk97tc08.aspx

Curious to see how .NET Native would compare given it is using the same backend as VC++ .

What do you mean by .NET Native?

He does compare .NET C# with the managed C++ extensions (terminology?) and managed C++ does pretty well, just a whisker away from full on low-level C++. And several times faster than C#.

.NET Native is compiled C#. You can think of it as pre-JITted platform -dependent C#. It is still managed, imposing memory safety through runtime bound checks (unless optimized out) and garbage collection. The project is preparing to be open sourced, it seems. For now you can read about it on MSDN.

The CoreFX project on github is part of the Common .NET implementation which includes Native, the new ASP.NET, etc.

Well they are experimenting with LLVM, as a backend for CIL.. So maybe this is a sign that they will not open source their VC++ backend and instead go with this LLILC [1] project for the AOT compilation target?

1 - https://github.com/dotnet/llilc

.NET Native is a .NET AOT compiler to be released as part of the next .NET version.

It uses the same backed as Visual C++, known as C2, generates static binaries and also makes use of SIMD and auto-vectorization.

C++/CX is not managed. Developers outside Windows keep mixing it up with C++/CLI just because they share the same extensions.

It is just syntax sugar for COM.

Thanks for the correction.

This comparison is unfair. In C# code it's using foreach loop over generic list which is ~4 time slower than for loop over array, but in C++ code it's using pointers (correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not a C++ ninja) which is fastest loop

>The C++ community is literally bursting with impressive examples

Ouch.

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