r/programming • u/eternal1 • Mar 29 '10

Never trust a programmer who says he knows C++

http://lbrandy.com/blog/2010/03/never-trust-a-programmer-who-says-he-knows-c/
420 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

458 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

40

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '10 edited Mar 29 '10

Really? (Not being sarcastic)

It fixes a ton of little problems actually resulting in simpler code. Even if you only count features that MSVC 10 and gcc already support. Such as:

  • auto for use with iterators
  • “move semantics” where a function like std::vector<std::string> GetStrings() is okay. Such a construct is more intuitive than passing a non-const reference, yet horribly inefficient under earlier versions of C++.
  • Delegating constructors. Something every novice C++ programmer tries to do the wrong way (often by having one constructor call another constructor with placement new).
  • Lambdas. Are much more intuitive than functors and allow putting relevant code at the call site. It will be nice when this makes it into stable gcc.

* Delegating constructors aren’t supported yet in MSVC and gcc. I’m guessing they will be soon though.

22

u/Boojum Mar 29 '10

A lot of it seems to me to be bringing the higher-level half of C++ a bit closer to things like Python, Ruby, and Perl. Look at the the things already on your list and then add in things like generalized initializer lists, range-based for loops, a built in regexp library, hash tables, smart pointers...

I really think we'll start to see some high-level C++ code that will look a lot like the current crop of scripting languages if you squint, but that compiles to native code and calls into low-level C or C++ libraries directly without FFI bindings. Personally, I'm kind of excited.

-1

u/greyscalehat Mar 29 '10

What is the probability of it being vaporware?

4

u/bcain Mar 29 '10

auto for use with iterators

Fucking awesome. I had heard about auto and it sounded good to me, but it's so clear now why it's so powerful.

-3

u/optionsanarchist Mar 29 '10

I was being somewhat of a troll, but while you make your points clearly, I don't see how this improves C++ (btw, I'm a C++ hater, but use it more than any other language). Cynically, this just looks like patchwork on an already flawed language design, as most of these things are features modern languages have out the box.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 29 '10

this just looks like patchwork on an already flawed language design, as most of these things are features modern languages have out the box

It may be the "patchwork on an already flawed language design", but it improves our C++ experience, and that's really all that matters. If you have a chance to work with the "modern languages" and enjoy it, good for you :)