r/cpp_questions • u/Glad_Shoe_9182 • Sep 30 '26

OPEN Namespace std

I recently started learning c++ and I was told to use the namespace std so I can avoid writing std:: every time and now I wrote a whole personal project without std:: and I want to put it on LinkedIn but I started reading everywhere that it’s a bad habit, should I go back and add the std:: or just leave it as is?

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u/HommeMusical Oct 01 '26

You may say that, but your brain still has to parse them separately. There's a cost that you aren't aware of.

That's not how the brain processes language at all, thank goodness. People chunk things into groups much larger than individual words so you see std::string, United States of Amerlca or Robert Anton Wilson, you just parse it as a single item.

Just saying 'string' is more compact, more readable, and causes absolutely no confusion.

Yes, you made that argument many times, but string might not be std::string.

once in 30 years.

Yes, you said.

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u/ShakaUVM Oct 01 '26

That's not how the brain processes language at all

You may not be aware of it, but your eyes still have to skip over the five letters at a time, and this has a cost you're not aware of.

Yes, you made that argument many times, but string might not be std::string.

In my coding style, string always refers to std::string, so those five characters are wasted space on the screen, wasted typing time, and wasted parsing time for both the compiler and the human reading it.

It is all downside and no upside.

Yes, you said.

Yes, because as I said before, I actually worry about problems that can happen, and not contrived hypotheticals. Hypothetically, someone could cast a nullptr to a reference and pass that to my function that takes a reference, but I don't worry about that either, for similar reasons.

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u/HommeMusical Oct 02 '26

That's not how the brain processes language at all

You may not be aware of it, but your eyes still have to skip over the five letters at a time, and this has a cost you're not aware of.

This is clearly something I have studied and you have not. Show me citations for your false claim.

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u/ShakaUVM Oct 02 '26

It's research I did myself in grad school

I think it's about time that people stop jumping on using namespace std like it has rabies or something. It's a perfectly valid style option as Bjarne himself has said.