Comment by spacechild1
6 months ago
> It is so objectively horrible in every capacity,
Total hyperbole and simply not true.
> but it still somehow managed to limp on for all these years
Before Rust became somewhat popular, there was simply no serious alternative to C++ in many domains.
That in and of itself is a failure. The decision to continually bolt more stuff onto this mess instead of developing a viable alternative is honestly painful. When you look at something like Zig, it gets you much of what C++ offers and in a way that doesn't cause you pain. Is the argument that Zig simply wasn't possible 30 years ago? I doubt it. As best I can tell, Zig comes as the result of a relatively experienced C programmer making the observation that you could improve C in a lot of easy ways. Were it not for the existing mess, he might have called his language C++. Instead a Scandinavian nut-job decided to heap some mess on top of C and everyone just went along with it.
I guess someone had to make all these mistakes so that others can now learn from them :)