Re:CppCon 2018: Simplicity: Not Just For Beginners [video]
by dnautics on Friday September 28, 2018 @04:00PM
(#18096566)
I feel the same way about the the "lost cause" (though I never programmed C++ professionally, I did for science fair projects, and played around, a lot, with the BeOS API back in the day - enough to get RSI):
Even JavaScript which kind of felt like a lost cause to me about three years ago has redeemed itself - I was shown a "way to code JavaScript" which exclusively uses ECMA6, keeps very little if no state, and basically everything is a `const fn (...) => {}`. A breath of fresh air in its simplicity and safety. C++ doesn't seem to want to converge to this sort of thing, even as usable subset of the language.
I would say the best quality of C++ is that you can be reasonably certain of what the program is doing at the machine language level (though obviously C is better) but this is going to be overtaken by languages like rust, which have more sophisticated type system and unlike VM languages (which definitely have their place) leave safety considerations in the compiler.
Even JavaScript which kind of felt like a lost cause to me about three years ago has redeemed itself - I was shown a "way to code JavaScript" which exclusively uses ECMA6, keeps very little if no state, and basically everything is a `const fn (...) => {}`. A breath of fresh air in its simplicity and safety. C++ doesn't seem to want to converge to this sort of thing, even as usable subset of the language.
I would say the best quality of C++ is that you can be reasonably certain of what the program is doing at the machine language level (though obviously C is better) but this is going to be overtaken by languages like rust, which have more sophisticated type system and unlike VM languages (which definitely have their place) leave safety considerations in the compiler.