Ask HN: Do you still enjoy coding in C++? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you still enjoy coding in C++?

39 pointshasley48 comments

In the recent years C++ received a lot of backlash due to its complexity and (perceived) feature creep. However, since C++11 I really enjoyed writing C++ with its strict type system (including const), range-based for loops, smart pointers, and how much you can do with templates. On the other hand, I know that it can be very tricky to write, for instance, a correct iterator, to get handling of rvalue references right, or to read error messages that involve templates.

So, do you enjoy or dislike writing C++ source code and why?

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I'm really torn about C++. I love C++ but there are things that I really don't like about it as well. It's a fantastic language in a lot of ways, but it carries around 40+ years of cruft, of things that you wouldn't do like that if you were inventing a programming language today.

I haven't written C++ professionally for many years at this point, and my memories of using it professionally (pre C++ 11) are not happy ones: having to agree on a strict subset of the language that we were allowed to use, which avoided features that any of the compilers didn't support well, or that my teammates didn't like. Sadly back then the list of forbidden features included templates and namespaces.

But using C++ on personal projects nowadays, and being able to choose which bits of the language to use - and which to avoid - is much more enjoyable. And honestly, the language did get a lot better from C++ 11 onwards.

What was the objection to namespaces?

Try to follow the WinUI 3 tutorials. You'll understand.

Could you elaborate please?

WinUI3 is awful for unrelated reasons. It's even a pain to use from C#, which is the language it (and the WinRT APIs) were designed to be the primary use case with. And of course C# namespaces work fine.

Newer Windows APIs are annoying to work with from C++, which is Microsoft's fault but signals something about direction.

I’m sorry, but this is very lazy non-answer.

If you have specific pitfalls to share, do so, otherwise what’s the point of commenting?

Oh, C++.

C++ feels like an old lover who I think fondly of. We were together many years, until about C++20, through thick and thin. It was exhilarating - blazingly fast, perhaps irresponsibly so, but heck, the ride was wild. It taught me so many things, and shaped me into the programmer I am today. But we went our separate ways when its shortcomings became too large to bear, and its behavior - too often undefined - no longer excusable.

I keep up with it because I still have love for it, but I have to admit I am deeply concerned about many of the life choices it is making. I should have seen how problematic it was, because I knew its history, but I had hope that it could change, and it just looks like it never will.

I'm still rooting for C++, even though I am very happy with my new primary language, Rust. I hope it changes to the better, because I really want the best for it, but right now I'm just not seeing it. It keeps repeating old mistakes (e.g., more UB footguns with every new feature), without addressing any of the big flaws (insufficient tools for building robust software).

I sometimes still write C++, but I'm not excited about it the way I used to be. When I do write C++, it's because I have to. When given the choice, Rust is simply just a better choice for almost everything I do. Right now, I don't see a future for C++ and me.

In one word: Power.

C++ is by far the most powerful language around. And this is for the best and (often) also the worst.

In term of generic programming, control on hardware, capacity of abstraction and more generally expressivity: Nothing, even today, come even close to C++.

It is a language full of foot guns and it has its fair share of legacy problems.

But if you learn to avoid it (throught experience and pain). You can reach a productivity and a level of performance in C++ which is very difficult to beat with anything else, including Rust.

Ironically, I find it particularly true in the age of A.I.

Because the amount of C++ around is so tremendous, that agents are currently pretty good at it if guided properly.

When it comes to generics/templates and expressivity, there are some arguably better languages around. But the range of having access to absolute low level control at the same time as highly abstract generic programming is virtually unmatched.

But the footguns are also impressive and formidable. And one of the unique powers of the language is that it allows the user to build constructs that improve the power of those footguns by several orders of magnitude. And teams can happily build footgun force multipliers without individually recognizing what they are working on.

I still write lots of C++, and the overall reason has more to do with the ecosystem (which is unmatched for what I do) than the language itself. I like it, but learning other languages made me yearn for features that C++ won't likely get before I retire a few decades from now (curse you, Walter Bright, for your awesome ideas! ;) ). In some ways, I feel about C++ like a child who saw ads of awesome toys, but they aren't available for purchase.

I enjoy writing C++ code.

I acknowledge that C++ is a bad language in a lot of ways, but it's a bad language which I know really well, and it fits with how I think about code. And it lets me effortlessly do "clever" things with how memory is managed to avoid unnecessary allocations etc. I've already learned most of its idiosyncrasies, handling rvalue references/move semantics, how to go about implementing contracts like iterators and containers, etc.

I also like writing Rust, and I like how Rust makes sure I don't make mistakes. I think Rust is a better language in many ways and I think it's the future of low-level programming (and I think it's wild that it took so many decades to get a proper competitor to C++!). But I also like how C++ doesn't care and lets me do whatever I want without acting as a nanny. I would never ever dare to write a publicly exposed web server in C++, but a game? Sure!

I agree that C++11 was a big step. This was around the time I was working on a master's thesis, building a distributed optimization framework based around simulated annealing, using hand-optimized CUDA kernels on Nvidia CPUs. Writing CUDA code became a much nicer experience with C++11, and I didn't hate it.

However, it was still a bad choice for all the plumbing, caching, networking, job-management, etc that a useful framework needed, and I started using more and more Python. C++ was frustrating for those bits.

Eventually, after some important work on Numba[0], I was able to replace C++ completely, even for the CUDA kernels, and just write a subset of Python. It wasn't without it's (often quite esoteric) problems, but I was happy to throw out the last bits of C++ code. The thesis was praised and had some outside attention, but fizzled out in the years thereafter.

0: https://numba.pydata.org/

I love C++, in the C++11 days I even organized a local C++ User Group at my university, and I've used it for the last 20 years as my main language.

I still appreciate its many merits but since a bit more than a year I migrated to Rust and I find it very difficult to look back, except for maintaining my previous C++ projects.

Surprisingly, it's not Rust's memory safety features that I miss the most when turning back to C++. It's mostly the absence of algebraic data types and pattern matching, and the split between compile-time and runtime polymorphism, i.e. concepts vs virtual classes, where in Rust you just have traits and use them for everything. On top of that the tooling and the ecosystem are just amazing.

There's a proposal for pattern matching sitting there under the committee's desk for some years now. With the mess that the standard committee is going through I really doubt they will be able to ship pattern matching for C++29 or even later. Too little too late.

So to answer the question, yes, I still appreciate the merits of C++ but I don't enjoy writing it as much as I have in the past.

This. Since Rust C++ has lost it's appeal for me. It used to have the good balance of performance/effort, but nowadays I wouldn't dare starting a new project using C++. Even LLMs are way better at coding in Rust.

Not a troll question, because I am thinking of starting a fairly chunky project in Rust, potentially around 500k LOC. Are compile times really as bad as people suggest, in Rust? I'll be going agentic development, so it will be iterating a lot.

Everything after C++14 is useless bloat that actively makes the language worse and more convoluted.

Still loving writing C++ and generally, it got much better over the years. User-Code (vs. library code) is quite easy to understand and it's easy to avoid pitfalls for the most part when using modern practices.

Main problem I see is that it has to move pretty slow. Reflection arriving finally now, but some more modern features might take an additional decade.

It feels however that around C++23/26, a lot of decade-long developings ( i.e.compile time stuff) are getting close to form a complete system without major limitations for the most part.

They also took notes regarding errors and templates, so the user experience also improved a lot (i.e. with concepts).

I only used it for bare-metal embedded and Linux user space where efficiency was important.

Some features are nice. Some arrived too late, like std::optional in C++17 [0] or std::expected in C++23 [1], and some features requires too deep knowledge of the language, like std::move unable to optimize for containers of structs without "noexcept" in their constructors. [2]

But honestly, the reason why I don't enjoy it is unrelated to the features added to each new standard. It's the build system. I just want to cross compile easily, add sanitizers to testing, and the minimal third party libraries I may need. I think I don't have to explain here how complicated it can get when you have to use CMake/Meson/Bazel, compared to other build systems.

[0] https://en.cppreference.com/cpp/utility/optional

[1] https://en.cppreference.com/cpp/utility/expected

[2] https://0xghost.dev/blog/std-move-deep-dive/

I'd like to put in a "no" after spending many years writing C++; my day job is in C# now.

The templating system is more powerful than any other language I have significant experience with, but that also lets people write incomprehensible systems. And the compile times always have been really long.

Yes I mostly enjoy it, but I don't do anything critical with it and I'm nowhere near expert level. I use the subset of it that makes sense to me. If I were doing something critical I'd want to use Ada, which I've played around with a little bit.

I think the lurking question is about Rust. I've read a book about it and it has some attractions but also what I think are some poor decisions. I suppose I'll have to use it for something sometime. C++ is sort of like Perl, it seems to me. A lot of what seems like bloat is actually affordances, so the thing you want is often surprisingly close at hand. Some things of course are awful.

I wouldn't call C++ a good language but it does most of the things. Enjoyment doesn't always mean productivity anyway. I enjoy using Forth but that's almost like enjoying riding a unicycle. I wouldn't do anything substantial with Forth except for recreation. I do feel fairly productive in C++.

I never enjoyed programming in C++. I feel its (original) syntax and approach to OOP to be obnoxious. I never looked into C++11, though; I hope things improved. The first love was always for C; notwithstanding all its shortcomings, I feel at home writing C, and I would still enjoy doing so.

I really enjoyed writing C++. At least the C++ with for loops, calling functions and the sort. Not so much the c++ of template specifications. I recently saw [1] and the point of C++ building new things with the template mechanics really resonated with me. Features built that way stopped me from using the part of C++ I really liked.

However, I stopped writing C++ once I switched to Rust. I assume I would still enjoy writing C++, as long as I can avoid a lot of the templating features. (I might have a different opinion if I worked on different kinds of C++ projects, eg more people, more library oriented, etc.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZTkT1Cq_aY

I still don't understand the "feature creep" complaint

python just introduced built-in sentinel, and only comment on an explainer video brought up that it's nothing new and is just a rename of unittest.mock.sentinel

who even knew there's unittest module? who even knew there's unittest.mock? definitely not me

because it doesn't matter - you use what you need and learn what you encounter. Same thing with C++

also "do you still enjoy X" is a loaded question

do you still enjoy speaking english?

There's a big difference between a function or class that you didn't know about (or has just been added to the standard library) vs a new language feature.

Python isn't immune from those either by the way (e.g. walrus operator, pattern matching) but nowhere near C++ level.

There is C++ and then there is C++. Totally different things.

One I enjoy programming. Another I dread.

That's the real answer. Which C++?

I'm beginning to believe that some of the Rust evangelists are there just because they'd rather write code in anything but <some dialects of> C++...

I know exactly what you mean. But I would even say there are more C++'s than just two.

"C++, but codebase is 20 years old"

"C++, but we ban or dont like most of C++ features"

"C++, but everything must be a template"

"C++, but codebase is completely new and we only use the new features"

"C++, but its the stl codebase"

"C++, but you are reading Stroustrup's book"

omg that hurts

HP or SGI STL?

I like coding in C++ a lot. I think it is great that it can both be a high level language an a low level one. One has control of the bits if one wants that but there are also a lot of goodies to make things happen automatically. I think RAII is the greatest invention in programming ever.

Yes, on side projects where I get to use concepts or modules, or even ranges.

Languages like C++, Scala, Haskell, is where I get the most fun coding, unfortunately the question can be reformulated as "Do you still enjoy coding?", as we get pushed to program into natural languages instead.

Yes, but I feel reticent nowadays in voicing out loud why exactly I like it (along with liking Rust). Because I don't want to give up my business ideas for free.

I stopped using C++ around the time when Boost libraries were a thing. It was fun to think a bit of how to do metaprogramming, but it quickly became apparent that this was not the right way to do things.

Whenever I write C++ that isn’t, like, pure algorithms I usually find myself wishing I had a nicer language where I could represent what I wanted in a clearer way.

Modern dialects of C++, sure. There's a nice language in there, it just comes with everything else and the kitchen sink. The most horrific code I've ever had the misfortune of working on was also C++.

I like that it can do anything. I don't like the sintaxis.

>Do you still enjoy coding in C++?

No, I migrated away from it in 2014 and it was one of the better decisions I made in my business. Productivity and quality went up.

As someone who's planning to get into low level - would you still recommend C++ or rust?

Yes. It was my first language (which I started to produce something useful, got jobs, etc...) - and it will be my last.

I had a love-hate relationship with C++.

In the decade prior to the release of the first version of C++ my company bought me a Lisp Machine, and programming was so much fun.

C++ was gnarly, and I put a lot of effort into making C++ easier for our new hires out of college to use (I wrote a C++ GUI library for them to use that evolved into my personal code for my two “Portable C++ GUI” books for McGraw-Hill). I ended up writing 5 C++ books, and using the language was fantastic for my career, but:

I never really liked C++

The metaprogramming features of C++ are the killer feature. Only zig comptime comes close. But zig deliberately doesn't allow operator overloading, so high-performance array/tensor programming APIs aren't anywhere near as ergonomic. Since I work in high performance scientific computing, this is a major drawback.

FWIW I was a Rust contributor, pre v1. I don't see Rust as a competitor to C++, but a 'better c' - you can clearly see this by looking at where Rust adoption is highest.

C++ has a boilerplate problem but at least more recent versions have addressed the biggest pain points - 1000 line compiler dumps of of template instantiation errors are less of an issue.

I have a love-hate relationship with C++. I am currently working with C++23 professionally in a complex project, with python layer on-top.

C++11 and later turned the scale more towards enjoyment, but having less time for tinkering and deep diving makes me annoyed. It's not entirely the core language's fault, but since high performance is the name of the game for C++, every library seems to make twists and turns to not leave anything on the table, which increases the cognitive load when writing code, be it performance critical or not. AI now alleviates that quite a bit.

I wish it was as concise as python, e.g. with the list comprehension. When I try to use the newfangled ranges algorithms to replace a (range-based) for loop, I roll it back in 90% of the cases because it neither is shorter nor more expressive.

I enjoy using C++ as “C with classes.”

I don't like C++ because I don't want to be on the losing side.

What is coding?

I like writing in C++ because Claude does most of the work and if I structure the source well it compiles much faster than my Rust code.

when I didn't know better (i.e., didn't know many other languages), back in 96 to maybe 2002 or so, I tremendously enjoyed C++. I felt so powerful. It was hard to get things right and fast following the literature at the time, but hey, low-level, power, yay!

Then I took a turn and learnt LISP, ML, and a whole potpourri of functional languages. Things were so easy to express in comparison to looking at _all_ the details _all_ the time. I dropped my C++ for quite a while.

Fast forward a decade, and I spent about a decade writing C++11 code. Then C++17. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but it got the job done. In the environment at the time, alternatives were not accepted, so I obliged.

Now I just see loaded and unsecured footguns everywhere when I look at C++. Note that I'm still paid to write C++, but after learning to trust smart compilers in semantically proper languages, learned about data oriented programming, learned about all the bad from the pointer-laden object-oriented style, about the problems of (thread) synchronization C++ style vs. message passing between programs (CSP), ... I grew to despise it.

Frankly, nowadays, I'd rather write in Ada, drop all the "smart" constructs whose smell reek through the whole code-base, and all the implied semantics of various interfaces which are not described on language-level but (maybe, hopefully) in the comments ... the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach of C++ bites us regularly, but still, the environment has a hard time accepting non-C++ code.

yep, i actually liked stl, iterators with auto also seem like a godsend now compared to how verbose they used to be. the biggest pain point for me was keeping track of all the required ctors and operator overloading. admittedly i used it back when all pointers were just *, once i discovered a single line of python could do what it took 10-100 lines of C++ to achieve i switched. so its been a looooong time since i programmed in C++, but i did like it overall.

idk but my claude seems to really enjoys writing code in C++

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