Re:Building a Website with C++
by calebtroyer on Saturday January 20, 2018 @12:17PM
(#16194156)
Why do people think the C++ of today is the same as the C++ of 1998? Today we have concepts such as RAII to clean up our objects when they go out of scope. We have references which are essentially safe pointers to an extent (see dangling references). References have always existed, but people insist on using raw pointers still. Finally, for those use cases where heap allocated memory is absolutely necessary, we have smart pointers which clean up the memory they own when the smart pointer object goes out of scope (an application of RAII). Other unsafe practices carried over from C such as void * type erasure are being replaced with type-safe objects (see std::any for C++17, boost::any for pre-C++17).
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There's still plenty of ways to shoot yourself in the foot if you are "not careful" with the modern C++ code you write. See for example http://foonathan.net/blog/2017/03/22/string_view-temporary.h...
Modern C++ has a lot of great stuff to help, but the sense of safety you get when you use Rust is something else entirely.
Re:Building a Website with C++
by SamReidHughes on Saturday January 20, 2018 @12:45PM
(#16194337)
Because Rust lets you hire noobs that don't know what they're doing and contains their damage. C++ is fine if you know what you're doing. It's ridiculous to claim that memory safety is helped by the use of references.
I can’t speak for everyone but I think of the C++ of today as being dangerously close to the C++ of 1998 because there is so much 1998 C++ code still being linked into most C++ projects. C++17 is incredibly powerful but it’s also hard to wield correctly and most people don’t have those skills yet (and almost none did while writing that 1998-originated library you eventually find yourself need to use). It’s not just the language that matters, it’s how that language gets used and by whom.