Thoughts on generative C++ [video] | Hacker News Reader

Thoughts on generative C++ [video]

youtube.com

55 pointsvowelless22 comments

Open articleView on HN

Here is the paper on metaclasses: http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2017/p070...

Wow, this looks like a huge change to the language. Reminds me of macros done well though.

Yes, it is quite nice. But how good things go, this might just be standardized post C++20.

"3years is not a long time" says the std committee.

If it's in standard in 2023 we can use it at work in 2025-2027 for those of us at particularly fast companies

I know a lot of companies that immediately adopt the new standards in C++, sometimes as soon as the compiler supports them, even if the standards aren't official yet.

For example, I was working at a company that was using C++14 features in 2013.

Right. We now have two world class compilers, gcc and clang, which both track the standard closely and this has forced Microsoft to improve their compliance as well. It is a golden age for C++ right now.

I only use C++ for native libraries accessed from Java/.NET, so it doesn't hurt me that much, given the average code size.

But things are much nicer nowadays than on the late 90's when I had to use the OS vendor C++ compiler for each system we were targeting, while ANSI was still designing what would become C++98.

Or the C compilers transitioning between some kind of K&R C support and ANSI C89.

There's no much hope C++ to go away any time soon, so C++20 is fine, there are C++25, C++30 and C++48 for more features to add.

As polyglot dev, I am kind of ok with C++17 and beyond, as ANSI C++ groups at least care about improving the security story, not like ANSI C.

I know it's unpopular, but I think security is overrated. No, I don't like the way it is, but really - do we know a company that gone bankrupt due the security breach? Do we know a single mobile app that lost it's major audience due the data exposure, or broken crypto implementation? Do we know any business that gone out of business due the security related reasons?

I'm not saying we should not care, but I'm convinced we can't turn the table over by polishing the tools. The user's perception of security is a show stopper as for now.

> I'm not saying we should not care, but I'm convinced we can't turn the table over by polishing the tools.

Why?

We know for a fact that GC'ed langauges can e.g. prevent double-free for ever and ever. Obviously, this is modulo the language/runtime implementation, but if there are bugs there you fix them once and every single program out there gets the fix instantly.

Similarly for many other types of 'dangerous' bugs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com