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Comment by ogoffart

5 hours ago

C++ works, but compared to other languages it's often no longer the most productive choice for UI work. Modern UI code is mostly glue and state management, where fast iteration matters more than squeezing out maximum performance. And when performance does matter, there are also newer, safer languages.

For teams comfortable with C++ or with existing C++ libraries to integrate, it can of course still be a strong choice, just not the preferred one for most current teams.

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ogoffart

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72deluxe  5 hours ago

But desktop C++ isn't difficult or slow to write...

It seems odd to me that the software world has gone in the direction of "quick to write - slow to run". It should be the other way around. Things of quality (eg. paintings by Renaissance masters) took time to create, despite being quick to observe.

It also seems proven that releasing software quickly ("fast iteration") doesn't lead to quality - see how many releases of the YouTube app or Netflix there are on iOS or Android; if speedy releases are important, it is valuing rush to production over quality, much like a processed food version of edible content.

In a world that is also facing energy issues, sluggish and inefficient performance should be shunned, not welcomed?

I suppose this mentality is endemic, and why we see a raft of cruddy slow software these days, where upcoming developers ("current teams") no longer value performance over ease of their job. It can only get worse if the "it's good enough" mentality persists. It's quite sad.

  • pitched  3 hours ago

    The part that takes time in UI isn’t wiring up components, it’s the small changes like something is a pixel to the right or that gap is two pixels wide. Changing those in a C++ project means recompiling and that adds up to significant overhead over a day of polishing the UI. If C++ was able to get builds out in less than a second, this wouldn’t be an issue. People value performance in their own tools more than the tools of their customer.