Comment by LexiMax
6 months ago
> Things have died down now, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
I have some bad news for you. In the early 90's, C++ _was_ that language. Not only that, but at the time a lot of the reactionary criticisms of C++ by annoyed C developers had a lot more weight to them.
- C++ was slower than C, because the costs of vtables and exceptions was a lot larger and compilers weren't as good at optimizing.
- C++ was bug-ridden, both because it was easy to accidentally misuse the language, but also because compilers were simply buggy due to the complexity of the language.
- Many of the STL containers you know and love were missing from pre-standard C++, and even afterwards its implementation was commonly subpar, leading developers to either use their compiler-specific proprietary containers or roll their own.
- Streams were often the only reliable thing in the C++ standard library. It also ballooned compile times to the point of being outright banned from many codebases.
- Don't get me started on the utter nightmare that was sifting through compiler errors through misuse of templates...
So yeah, I don't want to hear other C++ developers whine about how annoying Rust developers are. We were just as annoying back in the day, with a worse language. Linus banned C++ from the kernel, and honestly he was 100% right to do so at the time.
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