Hacker News Reader

Comment by TimorousBestie | Hacker News Reader

The article is a really good exposition of move semantics, but unfortunately many modern C++ features benefit from the pedagogical technique of “imagine this feature didn’t exist, this is why someone would want to develop it.”

I say unfortunately because this doesn’t scale. A junior programmer doesn’t have the time to process 30 years of C++’s historical development.

Mathematics (which has a much longer history and the same pedagogical problem) gets around this by consolidating foundations (Bourbaki-style enriched set theory -> category theory -> homotopy type theory, perhaps?) and by compartmentalization (a commutative algebraist usually doesn’t care about PDEs and vice versa).

I don’t see C++ taking either route, realistically.

View on HN

If we want to make the math analogy, C++ seems more like the language of math (basic algebra, the notion of proofs, etc.) that everyone uses, and the compartmentalization comes when you start to apply it to specific fields (number theory, etc.). That same concept exists in the C++ community: the people who care about stuff like asynchronous networking libraries aren’t usually the people who care about SIMD math libraries, and vice versa.

I also wonder if most junior C++ programmers can shortcut a bit by just using common patterns. Articles like these I’ve always thought were geared more toward experienced programmers who are intellectually curious about the inner workings of the language.

> I don’t see C++ taking either route, realistically.

But it has been taking the "compartmentalization" route: Once a new, nicer/safer/terser idiom to express something in code emerges, people being taught the language are directed to use that, without looking into the "compartment". Some of this compartmentalization is in the language itself, some in the standard library, and some is more in the 'wild' and programming customs.

It's true, though, that if you want to write your own library, flexibly enough for public use - or otherwise cater to whatever any other programmer might throw at you - you do have to dive in rather deep into the arcane specifics.

Mathematics doesn't need to remain backward compatible.

IMO math is backward compatible by default unless you change the foundational axioms (rare occurrence).

In particular you can most of the time define morphisms between concepts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com