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Reflection for C++26

(isocpp.org)
196 points svlasov | 2 comments | 30 Jun 24 11:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.782s | source
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qalmakka ◴[02 Jul 24 06:17 UTC] No.40853995[source]▶
While I love this paper and this proposal in general, as a C++ developer every time C++ adds a new major feature I get somewhat worried about two things:

1. how immense the language has become, and how hard it got to learn and implement

2. how "modernising" C++ gives developers less incentives to convince management to switch to safer languages

While I like C++ and how crazy powerful it is, I also must admit decades of using it that teaching it to new developers has become immensely hard in the last few years, and the "easier" inevitably ends up being the unsafe one (what else can you do when the language itself tells you to refrain from using `new`?).

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pjmlp ◴[02 Jul 24 07:25 UTC] No.40854317[source]▶
While I share the feeling, I don't feel that my daily languages (Java, C#, TypeScript) are getting that far behind.

Even Go is rediscovering that staying simple just doesn't happen for any language that gets industry adoption at scale.

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1. naertcxx ◴[02 Jul 24 09:43 UTC] No.40854963[source]▶
I agree with this. Python is now more complex than C++. Python looks as if it is simple, because the syntax looks clean.

If you read the new "compilers" [1] in packages like PyTorch, which are unfortunately written in Python, you stare at a huge code base with walls of text, objects calling one another in a maze of ravioli code and generally no help at all to make sense of it all.

Compare that to the gcc code bases, where it is always possible to find some entry point to understand the whole thing.

[1] "compilers", because despite the huge code base (wasn't Python supposed to be terse?) they preprocess the function graph and then call g++ and Triton to do the actual work.

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2. gpderetta ◴[02 Jul 24 10:53 UTC] No.40855342[source]▶
I very much have a love/hate relationship with python, but it does have a significantly milder ramp for beginners. The complexity is relatively well hidden. I can recommend python as a first language to someone that wants to learn to program. I can't do that with C++ with a straight face, unless one is especially interested in the areas were C++ still dominates.