Re:Shopify invests in research for Ruby at scale
by bin_bash on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @10:40AM
(#31411393)
2 years ago I spent 2 months learning C++ coming from almost entirely scripting languages throughout my career. (Though I have a CS degree so a decent academic background in memory management)
I came away liking C++ more than I thought I would. I didn't find it hard to learn but it was time consuming. Where learning Rust I never understood the basic concepts enough to be productive, I could be productive pretty quick with C++.
The trouble is there is a lot to learn because the language is just so old and has been through so many revisions. To some extent you can't just limit yourself to the modern stuff since in order to learn the modern stuff you need a basic understanding of what it was before to know why things are done the way they are now. You also run into code samples that use the old stuff or corner cases where they're needed.
I also think it really gets you to think about how computation and memory is happening at the metal level which is great for optimization but I think for most of the work I do it would be largely a distraction. I see this is a downside, not an upside.
That said, you're definitely right. You can have nice, expressive code in C++: I just think the learning curve is the biggest problem. I'd be happy to use C++ in my next project though.
I came away liking C++ more than I thought I would. I didn't find it hard to learn but it was time consuming. Where learning Rust I never understood the basic concepts enough to be productive, I could be productive pretty quick with C++.
The trouble is there is a lot to learn because the language is just so old and has been through so many revisions. To some extent you can't just limit yourself to the modern stuff since in order to learn the modern stuff you need a basic understanding of what it was before to know why things are done the way they are now. You also run into code samples that use the old stuff or corner cases where they're needed.
I also think it really gets you to think about how computation and memory is happening at the metal level which is great for optimization but I think for most of the work I do it would be largely a distraction. I see this is a downside, not an upside.
That said, you're definitely right. You can have nice, expressive code in C++: I just think the learning curve is the biggest problem. I'd be happy to use C++ in my next project though.