An unthinking programmer's guide to the new C++

Not one to be pedantic, but...

Don't you mean delayed until 7DA, or indeed until 7DF?

I think

#define RIDICULOUS int i = {};

Out-of-order loops

Been able to do this in Perl since forever:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

foreach (1,2,5,6,4,7..10) {

print "$_\n";

};

exit 0;

Nice to see another language catching up.

concepts

I can't get the concept of a concept - may be my axioms are wrong.

If I wanted to do that, I would code in Pascal

You say that like it's a bad thing...

Re: Out-of-order loops

Yeah,

After reading this tripe and comparing it to Perl I really want to see the justification C++ people put into calling Perl unreadable.

Hehe, great spoof comment

"hehe great spoof article

By Anonymous Coward Posted Thursday 7th May 2009 12:24 GMT

imagine if someone were really to try and put those things into C++"

Imagine if someone really didn't realise that they have done.

@ Ken

imagine if someone couldn't tell an ordinary comment apart from a joke comment

I used to code in C and C++...

... and I didn't understand a thing in the article or the comments. I must truly have passed to the Pointy Haired side.

Pointers...I think I remember them...

Mmmmm, yup ...

... this article sums up rather nicely why I loathe and detest C++ with the burning passion of a million, red-hot suns.

Kind of vindicates my continued use of Perl and Java or, in some cases, Plain Old C.

It's the one with K&R first edition in the pocket.

No Thanks

I'll stick to C.

I don't want inheritance or templates.

All I want are my lovely pointers and the ability to use them.

Everything else is for sissys.

gawdelpus

So rather than removing all the half-arsed parts they thought they'd add some more, and not just silly academic additions, no, they'll be "Improving Standard C++ for the Physics Community".

I notice that members of the old crowd are still there: Francis Glassborow (remember him Verity?), Herb Sutter, P.J. Plauger. Seems like a cosy get together for old time's sake. One for road.

ha you almost had me there

Until the bit about lambda functions! Now if only they'd implement first-order closures ...

Yikes its alive

I've looked into both C and C++ (and the m$ version too) and came to the conclusion that the designers of both C and C++ just wanted a language that used all those unused symbols on a keyboard...

Boris

mmm Java

Questioning the motives of C++ haters

Concepts, or concept checking, explicate the implicit interface of templates. They are a way of ameliorating the problem of templates producing terrible error messages when used incorrectly. Prominent C++ pundit Scott Meyers, well known in the C++ community as the author of the "Effective C++" series, has questioned the necessity of concept checking in the new standard.

The whole point of supporting initialiser lists (the { } syntax) is to allow classes, particularly containers such as std::vector to be initalised like arrays. i.e.:

std::vector<int> container = { 5, 6, 7, 8};

This previously wasn't possible.

References aren't pointless. They are safer than pointers, in that they cannot be null, must be initialised, and their value cannot be changed once initialised - They become an "alternative name" for the value, as oppose to some distinct construct that points to the value. This facilitates operator overloading, and simplifies code. If it wasn't for references, you'd have to de-reference the pointer returned by the operator:

my_class a, b;

...

my_class c = *(a + b); // returns a pointer that is de-referenced - defeats the purpose of operator overloading

As against:

my_class c = a + b; // exploits user's intuition of what + ought to mean

C++ certainly has more than its fair share of warts, but can we please see an article written by someone that understands the rationale behind the introduction of C++0x's new features?

I have plenty of criticism I could make of C++ in general, and C++0x in particular, but I feel most of C++'s defects can be attributed to historical reasons, or the fact that major sub parts don't gel together flawlessly. It seems to me that often the shrillness of the criticism you hear of it posted anonymously on the internet is in direct inverse proportion to the poster's actual knowledge of the subject - typically, they make sweeping remarks like "C++ is shit", or "C++ is to C as lung cancer is to lung", whatever that means. Why is it shit? If it is shit, how do you account for the fact that many major projects have successfully been completed in C++, among them GoogleFS, Photoshop, Firefox and openoffice.org - are the organisations that created those project just stupid? What would you write, say, photoshop in if you were starting from scratch? I suspect that these people's needs ( I suspect that they're web application developers and Java/C# developers that produce middle of the road business apps) are not best addressed by C++ in any case, but perhaps if they tried a modern C++ framework like Qt or WxWidgets they'd find that many of the oft-repeated put-downs are overstated, outdated, or just false (example: C++ is the only language that combines higher level abstractions with manual memory management, which is bad. Ever hear of RAII, or for that matter Ada?). Some of these same criticisms can be made of C (most prominently, things about the inherent dangers of native code), but people don't criticise C because Unix is C and Unix is cool and I'm a hacker. The difference with C++ is that you don't have to use C's low level constructs like char pointers for strings, or printf statements - there's always a much better, safer alternative.

A common, and valid, criticism of C++ is that it poorly encapsulates compilation units, necessitating recompiling client code when a class's definition is changed. That's the price you pay for the speed of having true local variables on the stack - the size of the class must be known in advance of compilation. The greater point illustrated by this example is that, essentially, C++ addresses the needs of a large (though largely reticent) group of people with a particular set of requirements that want the particular set of trade-offs that are least bad to them. Could there be, in principle, a language that better addresses *their* needs or preferences? Definitely. Is there one? For most of them, no. The number of people using C++ is not currently in decline (it was a few years ago), it just isn't growing as fast as the user base of other languages (source: Bjarne Stroustrup's website).

Hmmm

Even to the initiated these features look like a bit of a hard sell. However, anyone put off by the enhancements isn't in the market for C++ in the first place, so that is probably as is should be. I don't see C++ losing it's 'expert only' status anytime soon (which is laughable if you can remember when there wasn't really much of an alternative).

Some things are just complicated and other things are needlessly complicate (COM programming in C anyone?), but if you want to get the most from your machine you have to go beyond the average.

What will be interesting will be to see what new compiled language eventually comes along to properly challenge C++ (Digital Mars D seems like the obvious one a the moment, but that has its own issues). That isn't likely to happen anytime soon I would say.

If the new C++ features have you reeling in horror, then gues what - it obviously isn't for you. Just like device driver or OS kernel programming isn't for everyone.

When you're in a hole

Stop digging!

@Ralph

It's funny even if you know sweet FA about C And All Its Spawn, which to me is about as comprehensible as Ancient Greek.

Now, where di I leave my FORTRAN compiler?

...and my Java 2p worth...

for ( int i : new int[] { 1, 2, 5, 7 } ) {

// nothing new here...

}

haha

HTML kicks C++'s ass.

SAPPEUR

Check http://www.sappeur.eu. That is real innovation on top of C++:

-Safe as Java

-Trace Garbage, don't collect

-All pointers are Smart Pointers

-multithreading is made explicit in the Type System

-Array access is always checked

-Heap and Stack are safe

-References can (and should) be used

Save Energy and conserve Money - use SAPPEUR !

@Anonymous Coward

"...the auto keyword will be fine if it is implemented sensibly. The whole point is that you still have strong typing, but you no longer have to type an essay to define a complex type..."

I conclude I need to spend a bit more time understanding the auto keyword. It seemed to me it was sort of a 'variant', like in VB. Your comment contradicts this. Thanks.

@Colin Barfoot

The thing about C++ (and to a good degree C also) is that it is a very open ended language. So you can do all this wild stuff with it that Stroustrup maybe never dreamed of. The people you mention are IMHO people of good faith. In scientific computing FORTRAN has lost some ground to C++ - so adding complex numbers and such is a good idea.

What really convinced me C++ was worth learning and using was it's combination of flexibility and expressiveness and compactness (compared to most other languages at the time). That's what hooked me about C too.

But, hey, the ability of a language to express increasingly subtle things gives us arm-chair language designers something to talk about, eh? 90% or 95% of C++ programmers and C++ programs will not use the more esoteric new features. But where they are useful, nothing is wrong with having them.

My $0.02.

A sad day

I read the piece and despite not having touched a line of code in about 18 years I still laughed and got the jokes. I'm even more geek than I imagined.

Mine is the one with "'m really not THAT much of a geek" printed on the back.