Comment by PaulDavisThe1st
1 day ago
You can take
for (auto const & ess : esses) {
...
}
from my cold dead hands.
Also, you can fight me if you want to take
dynamic_cast<Derived> (base_ptr)
and force me to implement my own typing system every time I need to upcast.
Basically, stick with C and leave C++ programmers alone. I haven't seen a less useful article about C++ in a long time, and as an HN reader, that's really saying something.
One thing I've noticed about a lot of these "strict C" developers is that quite often they actually refuse to learn C++. One of the most common complaints of C developers regarding C++ is "it does things behind the scenes/performs magic", often with regards to operator overloading. When they refuse to actually look at the implementation (y'know you can check if an operator has been overloaded) AND they refuse to acknowledge that a huge chunk of "pure C" does HEAPS of magic behind the scenes (that the developer has no idea about) unless they've actually studied the spec in detail. Malloc and memory allocation methods are at least 10k+ lines of code for instance.
I don't think "refusing to learn C++" is the right way to frame it. I want to use the language features that are actually useful to me, without being forced into a specific programming style. I can't speak for every "orthodox C++" programmer, but for me that means using exclusively plain-old-data structs, non-member functions, and "dumb" pointers. I have no issue with learning to use a C++ feature when it's directly useful to a problem I'm trying to solve.
As one example, I recently found templated lambdas useful in making animations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw-h0dePYZM
Right. Use/Choose those features you are most knowledgeable/comfortable with. That is why C++ has such a smorgasbord of features and supports multiple paradigms. Over time, as one learns "better ways" (for a certain definition and one is convinced of it) of doing something change/modify as needed.
That is all there is to it.
I was programming in C++ before switching to C and I would say that C++ adds a huge amount of mental load compared to C. I think one can understand how much of a relieve it is to not worry about everything C++ does only after not using C++ for a quite a while.
Any time I go back to C from C++, it's only comfortable if I've got a C utility library that replaces most of std::
And that utility library (there are dozens of them) is just as subject to debate and issues as libstdc++
I am not going to implement my own C versions of 90% of the stuff std:: provides, sorry.
1 reply →
> y'know you can check if an operator has been overloaded
And there lies the problem with C++: to be sure, you have to check. C++ code can't be taken at face value -- the most innocuous-looking code could be a ticking bomb.
Just like any C function without looking into the translation unit, don't say you blindly believe on the function name.
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My favorite was the regex engine that was implemented using C++ operator overloading. The author was very proud of it, but you could not tell what code was regex code and what code was math code.
I went to some lengths with D to discourage such abusive operating overloading practice.
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But isn't this a problem with all code? Looking at a Rust function signature how can you be sure that it does what it says it does? Or python?
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> C++ code can't be taken at face value -- the most innocuous-looking code could be a ticking bomb.
You can't take C code at face value either. The name of a method or type doesn't tell you what it does. It could longjmp for all you know.
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A lot of us are too busy solving problems. Learning about the latest language features, which we often won't be able to use anyway due to the trouble of moving a large dev environment to a newer standard, feels like academic masturbation.
C++ folks are very much into their language, and can't seem to understand that most folks don't want to dedicate significant amounts of mental resources purely to language details.
Moving to new C++ is a non event, change the compiler / flags and done. Using the new features requires some learning but not a big deal since you can figure out what you need from a summary and learn what is useful for your problem.
The problems of the code I'm writing far exceeds the complexity of the language. Your complaint about complexity fall flat to me, unless you are working on a trivial program you need to deal with things far more complex than any language.
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Like implementing the compilers used by C devs.
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All the foot guns in C are still in C++, and C++ adds a significant multiple more.
The regular table saw is still in the new workshop, and the new workshop adds a SawStop and another regular table saw.
Literally untrue. Two words: stronger typing.
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Trust me, I know more C++ than most or all of my peers (working two jobs simultaneously), and I know a million ways that C++ features suck. Also standard library and containers. If you want I'll point out the ways in which std::deque, and even std::map, std::unordered_map, even std::vector (!) suck. IMO, just don't do it.
The standard library implements really do suck (in some cases), but this should be separated from C++ (the language). Even the standard splits the language grammar from the standard library cleanly.
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and even std::map, std::unordered_map, even std::vector (!) suck
It's really hard to take your comment serious because of generalization like this. Maybe they're not usable for your particular usecase but that doesn't mean they suck. Just like there's a 'million' ways that C++ sucks in your book, there's a reason there's millions of lines of code out there where these containers are valid usecases and hence work without issues whatsoever nor a need to replace them with something else.
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c memory allocation functions can be implemented in 1000 lines or so. I've done it myself. Maybe more are needed to handle strange operating systems or architectures, as glib does.
> Malloc and memory allocation methods are at least 10k+ lines of code for instance.
Only the really big ones, e.g. here is Emscripten's allocator that focuses on small binary size and is implemented in about 1.5 kloc (ignoring comments and whitespace it's actually under 1 kloc), and that allocator is perfectly fine for most use cases (especially C code bases which typically don't have a high allocation frequency):
https://github.com/emscripten-core/emscripten/blob/main/syst...
...and Seb Aaltonen's offset allocator (used for allocating GPU buffers in his Vulkan API wrapper) has under 500 lines of code:
https://github.com/sebbbi/OffsetAllocator/blob/main/offsetAl...
Right tool for the job etc... big general-purpose allocators like jemalloc or mimalloc are usually a bandaid to somewhat salvage a failed memory management strategy.
C programmers aren't complaining about the "magic" being tens of thousands of lines of code. They're complaining about the magic including bizarre side effects that brazenly violate the principle of least astonishment.
In C++, you can overload the comma operator to do shit. I've seen it done. There's no reason to do it, and no reasonable person would ever expect it in a code base they're unfamiliar with. To find bug in that ultimately roots back to that implementation, you have to go eliminate every other whack-job possibility before it even occurs to you that maybe the weirdo who wrote this code chose to overload the comma operator.
I'm not going to argue with anyone who wants to use C++ in their own projects, you do you. But let's be real about what C programmers are complaining about. It's not line count. It's syntactic obfuscation. I don't just level this criticism at C++ either. Basically every major new language has its own byzantine syntactic constructs to some degree.
“It’s so much magic! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go use my generic container library rewritten in 50 layers of preprocessor macros.”
If we accept the maximum that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", then c++ is indeed magic. It's so advanced that one of the worlds foremost experts in the language(herb sutter) has determined that the language is too complex and we need a whole new language(confront) which is simpler and can be converted to c++.
C++ is actually obscenely complex, I don't deny that. Just mastering object lifetime rules is crazy difficult due to all the edge cases, but it comes with the territory.
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> for (auto const & ess : esses) {
This is allowed by Orthodox C++
> dynamic_cast<Derived> (base_ptr)
This isn't because it requires RTTI, but dynamic_cast is also a typical code smell.
Orthodox C++ isn't generally against new C++ features, it only advices to wait about 5 years (or at least one C++ version) for stabilization and to apply some common sense before adopting them.
The notes about not using RTTI, exceptions and stdlib features that allocate under the hood are all justified by painful experience with those things in the context of game development.
In general, the restrictions outlined in the post make a lot of sense when considering that Branimir (of BGFX fame: https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx) is coming out of the game dev hemisphere, and from that PoV none of the restrictions are controversial - on the contrary, it would be highly controversial to suggest going all in on Modern C++ features ;)
> This is allowed by Orthodox C++
I can see no rationale for this whatsoever. It is nothing but syntactic sugar.
> Branmir (of BGFX fame
Appeals to authority don't really work for me.
I've been writing a cross-platform DAW (0) for 25+ years, in C++, and what a game dev has to say about the language in their own work might be of passing interest but not much more.
Being aware of the pitfalls of particular features of a language is an important task for anyone programming in that language. But that doesn't mean that the language is fundamentally broken or that programmers cannot make their own choices about which features to use.
(0) on at least the same level of complexity as a modern game
Your level of vitriol and anger at someone expressing an opinion is really weird.
Literally everyone who uses C++ decides which features to use/embrace and which to avoid. Someone sharing their particular preference is pretty normal and fine.
> Appeals to authority don't really work for me. I've been writing a cross-platform DAW (0) for 25+ years, in C++
I love how you reject appeal to authority and then try to establish yourself as an authority. That’s cute.
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LLVM uses a hand-rolled version of RTTI for the best performance (the parent constructor accepts its runtime type as an enum), and it seemed that the maintenance costs for it aren't that high. (See https://llvm.org/docs/HowToSetUpLLVMStyleRTTI.html)
Or if you're even lazier, you can easily make a more automatic RTTI system with some templates / macros that works much faster than dynamic_cast! (See https://github.com/royvandam/rtti)
> for (auto const & ess : esses) {
The problem with this is that whoever is reading the code as-is does not know what type "ess" is. Sometimes you get the definition somewhere nearby, in which case it is probably fine - assuming it is close enough that it'll be included in a diff - but more often than not you don't know.
Yes, an IDE can probably tell you (probably, depends on the IDE and assuming everyone uses one) but even that requires some extra action like moving the mouse over the definition and hoping it'll give you something. However this wont show up in diffs, PRs, code reviews, etc.
IMO `auto` is one of those C++ features that really needs discipline to use - and when in doubt, i'd rather ban its use (except where you cannot do otherwise) than rely on everyone doing the right thing.
C++ is an IDE type language in my opinion. C is not, because C doesn’t have an expressive enough type system anyway to justify it.
Yes, just use and IDE. This is a problem in Rust as well. And C#, Java, and others.
IMO you should use auto as much as possible. If the code can be written with auto, it should be. There’s no reason to repeat type definitions.
If you can use auto, what that means is the type is already statically known. C++ is a statically typed language; the compiler and tools know what type things are. So, just ask the tools, because they’re not wrong.
It doesn't matter what the type is, that's the whole point!
Moreover, what's even more beautiful? You can change the type of things in the container "esses", and the code doesn't need to change.
If you have the experience, this construct tells you everything you need to know: it's an iteration over a container, visiting every element in order, without copying it, and without modifying it.
You don't need to know any more.
How important is that, the ability to be certain of the type of some iterated value from a container from one line in total isolation? The odds are very good that it's clear from the context, which is why the compiler can infer it easily enough too. And then the consequence of not inferring correctly would be...the code doesn't compile?
Of course some discipline is required - as with just about everything in programming, especially in C++ - but developers in just about every other statically-typed language lean on type inference (including far more extensive type inference) and don't wring their hands about it. It's hard not to see this as a case of Blub - if you learned about typing with `Foo foo = new Foo()`, anything different might seem scary.
...anyway, in this case the real win probably is the range-based for loop, rather than the auto. `for (const Foo& foo : foos)` isn't so bad, but `for (std::vector<Foo>::const_iterator it = foos.begin(); it != foos.end(); ++it)` is pretty rough.
> How important is that, the ability to be certain of the type of some iterated value from a container from one line in total isolation?
As important as the code to be readable.
> The odds are very good that it's clear from the context
As i wrote, if the actual type can be seen somewhere nearby (close enough to be included in diffs) then that's fine - it is already in the context. Though that is not usually the case and i personally had to work with code with which i was not familiar and which used `auto` all over the place and had to go hunting for the actual container declaration to see what it is (Visual Studio was not helpful in its tooltips).
So my actual experience is that i'd rather see the actual type.
However...
> anyway, in this case the real win probably is the range-based for loop
...yes, the range-based for loop is often the better choice when it comes to readability. And when compared with the iterators, it is pretty much always more readable than them :-P. `for (const Foo& foo : foos)` is basically what i'd prefer to see. It is the use of `auto` i pointed out.
Implementing STL iterators are a bloody PITA
You don't need iterators for the range-based for loop, just a .begin() and .end() method which returns a raw pointer is enough.
E.g.:
https://github.com/floooh/oryol/blob/eb08cffe1b1cb6b05ed14ec...
(don't use that project though because it's been archived, I've switched back to plain old C in the meantime)