Hacker News Reader

Comment by porphyra | Hacker News Reader

    using namespace std;

is considered kinda bad since you don't want your namespace to be polluted with a bunch of std stuff. For example if you have `int count` lying around somewhere you'd want to be able to call `std::count` without fear of it being shadowed.

View on HN

But ambiguity gives you readability. And if a "count" variable clashes with the function name, it's trivial for the compiler to catch this and warn you.

It's a matter of preference, but I'd still risk ambiguity and name collision, especially when you go beyond std:: (like boost stuff).

It gives you readability. It's not what I'm used to, so it feels like reading French to me. Generally, if I see something without a namespace, it has a local scope.

Because of bad design decisions, a whole pile of unrelated stuff lives in the std namespace, and the disambiguation probably isn't what you wanted, so this can silently cause surprises.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com