←back to thread

196 points svlasov | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
qalmakka ◴[] 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`?).

replies(5): >>40854017 #>>40854131 #>>40854317 #>>40854746 #>>40854925 #
naertcxx ◴[] No.40854925[source]
I think the focus on smart pointers is a huge mistake. Code bases using shared_ptr inevitably will have cycles and memory leaks, and no one understands the graphs any more.

Tree algorithms that are simple in literature get bloated and slow with shared_ptr.

The only issue with pointers in C++, which C does not have, is that so many things are copied around by default if one is using classes. So the way to deal with tree algorithms is to have a hidden tree with pointers and a class that wraps the tree and deletes all dangerous copy methods, implicit and explicit.

stdlib++ seems to use that approach as well.

replies(5): >>40854938 #>>40855245 #>>40856792 #>>40859762 #>>40870787 #
1. eschneider ◴[] No.40856792[source]
Shared pointers are _great_. But, yeah, shared pointers don't _solve_ memory management problems and people still need to understand how pointers work and memory lifetimes. This continues to be hard for a lot of people. :/