In Defense of C++

This is a good article but it only scratches the surface, as is always the case when it comes to C++.

When I made a meme about C++ [1] I was purposeful in choosing the iceberg format. To me it's not quite satisfying to say that C++ is merely complex or vast. A more fitting word would be "arcane", "monumental" or "titanic" (get it?). There's a specific feeling you get when you're trying to understand what the hell is an xvalue, why std::move doesn't move or why std::remove doesn't remove.

The Forest Gump C++ is another meme that captures this feeling very well (not by me) [2].

What it comes down to is developer experience (DX), and C++ has a terrible one. Down to syntax and all the way up to package management a C++ developper feels stuck to a time before they were born. At least we have a lot of time to think about all that while our code compiles. But that might just be the price for all the power it gives you.

[1] https://victorpoughon.github.io/cppiceberg/

[2] https://mikelui.io/img/c++_init_forest.gif

In Linuxland you at least have pkg-config to help with package management. It's not perfect but neither is any other package management solution.

If I'm writing a small utility or something the Makefile typically looks something like this:

    CC=clang
    PACKAGES=libcurl libturbojpeg
    CFLAGS=-Wall -pedantic --std=gnu17 -g $(shell pkg-config --cflags $(PACKAGES))
    LDLIBS=$(shell pkg-config --libs $(PACKAGES))

    ALL: imagerunner

    imagerunner: imagerunner.o image_decoder.o downloader.o

Consider that to do this you must:

- Use a build system like make, you can't just `c++ build`

- Understand that C++ compilers by default have no idea where most things are, you have to tell them exactly where to search

- Use an external tool that's not your build system or compiler to actually inform the compiler what those search paths are

- Oh also understand the compiler doesn't actually output what you want, you also need a linker

- That linker also doesn't know where to find things, so you need the external tool to use it

- Oh and you still have to use a package manager to install those dependencies to work with pkg-config, and it will install them globally. If you want to use it in different projects you better hope you're ok with them all sharing the same version.

Now you can see why things like IDEs became default tools for teaching students how to write C and C++, because there's no "open a text editor and then `c++ build file.cpp` to get output" for anything except hello world examples.

I can use pkg-config just fine.

Not sure how relevant the "in order to use a tool, you need to learn how to use the tool".

Or from the other side: not sure what I should think about the quality of the work produced by people who don't want to learn relatively basic skills... it does not take two PhDs to understand how to use pkg-config.

I'm just pointing out that one reason devex sucks in C++ is because the fact you need a wide array of tools, that are non portable, and require learning and teaching magic incantations at the command line or in build scripts to work, doesn't foster what one could call a "good" experience.

Frankly the idea that your compiler driver should not be a basic build system, package manager, and linker is an idea best left in the 80s where it belongs.

For most people this is a feature not a bug as you suggest. It may come across as PITA, and for many people will do, but as far as I am concerned, while also having experienced the pain of package managers in C++, this is the right way. In the end it's always about the trade-offs. And all the (large) codebases that used conan, bazel or vcpkg induced a magnitude more issues that you would have to handle which otherwise in a plain CMake you would not have. Package managers are for convenience but not all projects can afford themselves the trouble this convenience brings with it.