Since I've been working in C++ a lot recently I decided to watch the video as I waited for a build to complete. So the length is about right. And fortunately, the video is a delight!
Yes, although in all honesty the actual compilation is somewhat small compared to the many layers of unit, simulation, integration, and regression tests. All those corner cases take a long time to explore.
It's surprising that C++'s development trend continues.
When a game or program is made with C++, it's usually nice because performance is mostly guaranteed. But if someone told me to write C++ myself, I'd cry. There's too much to memorize, and the standards are too varied. When I go to a project site for maintenance and it's a C++ project, I instantly lose energy — because it's just too difficult.
I'd be happy if someone else wrote it, but it's not a language I want to write myself
One of my hobbies is rummaging around thrift stores appreciating tacky things from bygone eras, sifting through ill-conceived modern junk, and delighting in simple, solid tools where I can find them.
> But if someone told me to write C++ myself, I'd cry. There's too much to memorize, and the standards are too varied
If someone tells you to write a web app, do you also cry? Surely there's more JavaScript frameworks than subsets of C++ at this point, no? Do you also go memorize all of them? Or do you just quickly pick one, and then only learn that one, and forget the rest exist? Because that's kinda how you approach C++. You pick a subset (like, say, just modern C++, only caring about C++17 & later or whatever), and just use that. And move on with your life. There's absolutely no reason to learn how std::auto_ptr works because it's dead in the same way you aren't learning how PHP & CGI works if you're making a modern web app. They're dead relics of the past that you can just pretend don't exist.
I don't really understand this perspective. You don't need to memorize anything to learn a new programming language. You choose a medium-sized project you've already done in another language, start with "Hello world," and add one line of code at a time until the project is done. When there's something you need that you don't know how to do, you look it up.
You'll end up with a strong understanding of the subset of the language that's actually useful for the thing you want to build.
You get used to writing C++, just like you get used to writing any language. I've been writing C++ for quite some time already, on a daily basis, and it became second nature. Though I remember how much of a pain it was when I initially move into it
> There's too much to memorize, and the standards are too varied. When I go to a project site for maintenance and it's a C++ project, I instantly lose energy — because it's just too difficult.
I've been feeling this way about web dev for a while now, and sometimes look at C++ devs with jealousy, wishing that the crazy amount of memorization/varied standards/rough maintenance/high difficulty I experience were only limited to the language that I write.
I‘m out of the loop: we‘ve had Python, Clojure and possibly something else recently. Is that a series by the same people working through several languages? Is it happenstance? Is it a trend, and every programming language is now scrambling to get their own video documentary?
My only problem with C++ is that it’s too verbose. my eyes need to parse huuge chunks of things when I just want some convenient syntax for it. otherwise the idioms are pretty universal for most programming languages nowadays.
C++ is quite amenable to making things less verbose. For example: Instead of a standard library algorithm taking a pair of iterators, you could have a function taking a container and calling the other function with its start() and end(). And then, with newer versions of the language, you can use a ranges-based function. There are lots of such syntactic hacks, from `using` through typed literals all the way to preprocessor macros (which we want to avoid, but are still there).
That's how you emulate language features that aren't there originally. I've "impelemented" a static code block, like in Java:
Interesting, I don't find modern C++ verbose at all. 'auto', range-based for-loops and structured bindings did a great job at reducing the verbosity of C++98.
On top of that, C++ allows to design very concise APIs. (One of my favorite examples is sol2: https://github.com/ThePhd/sol2).
Library code involving templates, on the other hand, can be pretty complex and hard to read. Concepts and other C++20 features (like [[no_unique_address]]) are certainly an improvement, but only new projects with no backwards compatibility requirements can actually use them (unconditionally).
So happy to see Andrei Alexandrescu was included in this documentary. His book on modern C++ design was a mind opener at the time I read it. Maybe still is today. Anybody else read it?
I read it recently. I liked a few of the chapters especially how policy classes fix some issues with OO design. I do recommend asking an AI chatbot to summarize each chapter and say what the modern equivalent is since some of the idioms have improved. I think one whole section was obsoleted through the use of std::variant and std::visit.
It still amuses me, but Andrei's books were the "last straw" that pushed me away from C++ for many years. Great books, truly, and they helped cement the notion that I wanted to move on to a different language. (Go, at the time.)
It also caused developers to produce template-heavy code that took minutes to compile. We used to joke that these developers were "bitten by Alexandrescu".
But it was indeed a nice book that really made stataic polymorphism popular. Before that, most books focused on building object hierarchies with virtual functions, etc.
What a lineup of contributors—Stroustrup, Stepanov, Kernighan, Lattner, and more in one film. Forty years from 'C with Classes' to the fastest-growing of the top four languages is a remarkable arc, and it's nice to see the people behind it get their due. Adding this to the weekend watchlist. Thanks for sharing, Herb!
Personal opinion: C++ is the most elegant language I have used (for about 15 years). If you are the 'systemizer' type and like to have an extremely precise mental model of the thing you write down to the last bit, nothing beats C++. I acknowledge the limitations and uncertainties that come from compilers etc, but still
An elegant language is one that achieves a lot with very little. Forth and Scheme are elegant languages. You're free to like working in C++, and you can sure achieve a lot with it, but I don't think it's controversial to say that it does not do so with very little.
I love a free documentary about something that I'm passionate about. So many thanks.
However, I'm a my own kind of weird. I cannot watch a documentary that's made out of people saying short sentences. I get that it's made to 'have them tell the story', but I need a narrator to tell me what to think because I get distracted.
Ken Thompson's criticism of C++ as incoherent, complex and garbage heap of ideas still resonates with me; C++98 was the last version I used for work although I've dabbled in 11/17/20 out of curiosity.
IMO, if c++/cfront didn't ride on the tails of c, I'm skeptical it would've seen widespread use, but then, that's its main identity which limited it in ways that C++ was not willing to change; It is highly irritating to spend as much time to sanitize the implementation with Coverity/Valgrind and the ilk when the compiler could've handled it.
With C++98, Bjarne's book on c++ internals could've give you good insight into what went on, but later it turned into a whole cottage industry of "effective, more effective, proficient, performant, c++" series of books -- so kiss goodbye to any notion of being able comprehend existing code that's not written by you (until llms arrived). I'm happy to have spent time to learn problem domain instead.
I'll still watch the documentary since it has some of my favorite folks (Kernighan, Stepanov).
> IMO, if c++/cfront didn't ride on the tails of c, I'm skeptical it would've seen widespread use
Obviously. C++ was a "better C" in that you could keep a lot of your "legacy" C code while improving your codebase piecemeal with C++ features. Your management didn't even have to care, in that C/C++ was accepted as a valid descriptor even by people who should have known better. It's a wonder Java/C# and Perl/PHP never caught on.
I obviously don’t know them personally, but what I get from this old school generation that have been a pillar of computer science and, why not, modern human history, is just a tiny little bit more humbleness than “influential” people nowadays.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 71.3 ms ] threadBecause of AI, right?
Also
>It is because we have enduring demand for languages that are good at performance per watt.
(1 min in from above link)
When a game or program is made with C++, it's usually nice because performance is mostly guaranteed. But if someone told me to write C++ myself, I'd cry. There's too much to memorize, and the standards are too varied. When I go to a project site for maintenance and it's a C++ project, I instantly lose energy — because it's just too difficult.
I'd be happy if someone else wrote it, but it's not a language I want to write myself
That's what it's like to be a C++ programmer.
If someone tells you to write a web app, do you also cry? Surely there's more JavaScript frameworks than subsets of C++ at this point, no? Do you also go memorize all of them? Or do you just quickly pick one, and then only learn that one, and forget the rest exist? Because that's kinda how you approach C++. You pick a subset (like, say, just modern C++, only caring about C++17 & later or whatever), and just use that. And move on with your life. There's absolutely no reason to learn how std::auto_ptr works because it's dead in the same way you aren't learning how PHP & CGI works if you're making a modern web app. They're dead relics of the past that you can just pretend don't exist.
You'll end up with a strong understanding of the subset of the language that's actually useful for the thing you want to build.
I've been feeling this way about web dev for a while now, and sometimes look at C++ devs with jealousy, wishing that the crazy amount of memorization/varied standards/rough maintenance/high difficulty I experience were only limited to the language that I write.
That's how you emulate language features that aren't there originally. I've "impelemented" a static code block, like in Java:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/34321324/1593077
and that's all in C++98. The implementation is a bit ugly but the use is terse and self-expalantory.
On top of that, C++ allows to design very concise APIs. (One of my favorite examples is sol2: https://github.com/ThePhd/sol2).
Library code involving templates, on the other hand, can be pretty complex and hard to read. Concepts and other C++20 features (like [[no_unique_address]]) are certainly an improvement, but only new projects with no backwards compatibility requirements can actually use them (unconditionally).
But it was indeed a nice book that really made stataic polymorphism popular. Before that, most books focused on building object hierarchies with virtual functions, etc.
However, I'm a my own kind of weird. I cannot watch a documentary that's made out of people saying short sentences. I get that it's made to 'have them tell the story', but I need a narrator to tell me what to think because I get distracted.
Still lots of love to the creators, of course.
Web devs are just users playing in a C++ dev’s program. ;)
IMO, if c++/cfront didn't ride on the tails of c, I'm skeptical it would've seen widespread use, but then, that's its main identity which limited it in ways that C++ was not willing to change; It is highly irritating to spend as much time to sanitize the implementation with Coverity/Valgrind and the ilk when the compiler could've handled it.
With C++98, Bjarne's book on c++ internals could've give you good insight into what went on, but later it turned into a whole cottage industry of "effective, more effective, proficient, performant, c++" series of books -- so kiss goodbye to any notion of being able comprehend existing code that's not written by you (until llms arrived). I'm happy to have spent time to learn problem domain instead.
I'll still watch the documentary since it has some of my favorite folks (Kernighan, Stepanov).
Obviously. C++ was a "better C" in that you could keep a lot of your "legacy" C code while improving your codebase piecemeal with C++ features. Your management didn't even have to care, in that C/C++ was accepted as a valid descriptor even by people who should have known better. It's a wonder Java/C# and Perl/PHP never caught on.