I manage a c++ team btw. Our app has to be fast.
Still, have you guys looked at alternatives -- and seriously evaluate them? Rust, Zig, Nim, D, others?
If you tell me "we can't afford to, we have too much work" then that's also a valid answer (for a while at least).
Good lord, if that's the kind of human capital that's involved in making next-generation languages, then I have no doubt what will still be used to write serious software in 2080.
(Hint: not Rust.)
For any particular combination of compiler, OS and computer architecture there are no 'undefined behaviors'; you only care about the concept if you want portability to a different compiler/OS/architecture.
So the idea that C++ sucks because of 'undefined behavior', so let's use some random language without an ISO standard or any portability guarantees at all is completely and utterly insane.
C++ alternatives still need to grow up to this kind of mixed language development, where I can have .NET code with C++ libraries and easily debug across them on the same Visual Studio session.
Same applies to Java and C++ development experience.
F.ex. when coding in Erlang/Elixir I can use an excellent bridging library between their VM and Rust. There's also an excellent support for working with C libraries. Not sure what else can be expected.
Maybe I am not reading you correctly and I apologise if so. It just kind of sounded like "the newer languages must be compatible with 20+ different ABI standards if they want us the older programmers working in C/C++ to adopt them"?
Back on the original topic, I completely understand if a project has too much baggage and sunk cost so as to make even a partial migration (and hardening via using memory-safe languages and/or professional paid code analysis tools) unrealistic.
It is like telling someone to delivering games in Unity and Unreal that they should use Amethyst instead, without understanding what it means to actually having a team working in those ecosystems.
Naturally Rust will get there, however it took C++ 30 years to be where it is today, and that is what any replacement attempt should take into consideration.
That being said, I agree -- existing teams can't be expected to just run away to the new thing, that much is true.
CLI tooling is the best it ever was in history (from where I stand at least). But IDE tooling isn't a first class citizen for many languages these days, is what I was saying.
Just for reference, my first UNIX was Xenix.
Don't see the point why people buy expensive computers to just use them like we did at the university lab with IBM X terminals.
The main difference was that instead of Slack we had xterms dedicated to run talk sessions.
Java's main issue is the barrier to entry is lower because it has good tooling, which means really bad, inexperienced programmers can write bad code, and have more tooling to bail them out, allowing them to continue down that path until they have a huge ball of mud.
There ought to be some kind of phrase for this "the tooling curse".
GDB isn't bad, IMHO, but the inability of IDEs to deterministically parse templates / index code without huge problems is problematic.
More like the inability of text editors to parse templates; most IDEs rely on a full compiler backend that can usually figure things out.
The ultimate result, given the slow compile times of c++, is that you cannot know in your editor if your code is correct.
My experience is frankly more that the usual IDEs I know of can't even handle syntax coloring 100% correct when it comes to C++…
I'm surprised you haven't seen this point made many times. It would be a full-time job on the internet asking people why they have code completion issues with C++ IDEs.
template<typename T>
void foo(T bar) { bar.buzz(); }
It turns out if you use enough layers of templates, the compiler has to carry around an awful lot of state to figure out what program it should actually output.
This is another downside to a 1400 page language specification; whether the user can hold most of it in their head or use a reliable, safe subset to avoid sharp edges, the compiler and tools still have to be aware of all of the layers of complexity in both the code a developer is writing and often whatever tricks and quirks developers chose to usein the libraries the developers code is depending on.
template<class _Tp, class ..._Args>
inline _LIBCPP_INLINE_VISIBILITY
typename enable_if
<
!is_array<_Tp>::value,
shared_ptr<_Tp>
>::type
make_shared(_Args&& ...__args)
{
return shared_ptr<_Tp>::make_shared(_VSTD::forward<_Args>(__args)...);
}For that matter, most of the so-so devs resumes that come across my desk will list "HTML and CSS" as skills. Even among experienced devs, being legitimately good with HTML or CSS is extremely rare. I'd give my eye teeth to have a dev on staff who was an actual HTML expert (knows the w3c docs, can write clear, correct, semantic html using the right tags, organizes and expresses their intent, etc.), but since the barrier to entry is barely above basic literacy, so finding one is tough.