Important reminder just in the Preface :-)
Takeaway #1: "C and C++ are different: don’t mix them, and don’t mix them up"
replies(8):
Takeaway #1: "C and C++ are different: don’t mix them, and don’t mix them up"
Where "mixing C/C++" is helpful:
- I "mix C in with my C++" projects because "sqlite3.c" and ffmpeg source code is written C. C++ was designed to interoperate with C code. C++ code can seamlessly add #include "sqlite3.h" unchanged.
- For my own code, I take advantage of "C++ being _mostly_ a superset of C" such as using old-style C printf in C++ instead of newer C++ cout.
Where the "C is a totally different language from C++" perspective is helpful:
- knowing that compilers can compile code in "C" or "C++" mode which has ramifications for name mangling which leads to "LINK unresolved symbol" errors.
- knowing that C99 C23 has many exceptions to "C++ is a superset of C" : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibility_of_C_and_C%2B%2B...
The modern fmt-inspired std::print and std::println etc. are much nicer, preserving all the type checking but losing terrible ideas like stored format state, and localisation by default. The biggest problem is that today C++ doesn't have a way to implement this for your own types easily, Barry illustrates a comfortable way this could work in C++ 26 via reflection which on that issue closes the gap with Rust's #[derive(Debug)].
I think this is a very lazy and somewhat conspiratorial take.
C++'s IO stream library, along with C++'s adoption of std::string, is a response to and improvement over C's standard library support for IO. That alone makes it an invaluable improvement. It's easy and very lazy to look back 30 years ago and badmouth things done back then.
It's also easy to complain about no one proposing changes when literally anyone, including you, can propose changes. The only need to do the legwork and put their money where their mouth is. The funny part is that we see frameworks putting together their own IO infrastructure and it ends up being not good, such as Qt's take on IO.
But talk is cheap and badmouthing doesn't require a pull request.