Linus Torvalds - C++ is a horrible language

http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/57643/focus=57918

by yapcguy • 13 years ago

25 16 13 years ago

thread.gmane.org

zwieback• 13 years ago

Seen 1 and 5 years ago but always good to reheat this one...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3192238

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=51451

yapcguy3• 13 years ago

Subsurface, the diving software originally written by Torvalds, is moving to QT because they are sick of problems with GTK.

If you follow the mailing list, they're only using the minimal amount of C++ required for QT, otherwise everything is in C. So in 2013, Linus still doesn't like C++.

mihai_ionic2• 13 years ago

Seeing as I consider Qt to be a particularly badly designed C++ library, this speaks volumes about how cumbersome some C APIs are to use. Not that there is any real alternative for a cross-platform UI toolkit.

zek• 13 years ago

Well I agree with everything he has to say here, I am constantly amazed with Linus' delivery. There were plenty of way to make the point he wanted to make without attacking anyone and with a much less angry tone.

LekkoscPiwa• 13 years ago

maybe he has some personal issues.

krapp• 13 years ago

I've only had it for a semester but already I hate it.

Maybe that puts me in esteemed company.

(probably not though.)

pearjuice• 13 years ago

Relevant interview - whether real or fake - with Bjarne Stroustrup.

http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/Beowulf/c++_interview/c++_inter...

"Stroustrup: Hmm. I've always wondered about that. Originally, I thought I had. Then, one day I was discussing this with a guy who'd written C++ from the beginning. He said he could never remember whether his variables were referenced or dereferenced, so he always used pointers. He said the little asterisk always reminded him."

yapcguy3• 13 years ago

Quite amusing, the original author should do an update for C++11.

jongraehl• 13 years ago

infinite amounts of pain when they don't work (and anybody who tells me that STL and especially Boost are stable and portable is just so full of BS that it's not even funny)

People are so good at rationalizing their preferences that they sometimes say really stupid stuff withour realizing it. This nightmare scenario of relying on boost, std::vector, or whatever - it's really basic stuff that's both open source and easy to understand/debug - e.g. https://github.com/graehl/boost/tree/object_pool-constant-ti... (reminds me - I should really get around to submitting this)

That said, avoiding libraries (especially avoiding templates and just using void*-like stuff) does keep binaries/libs smaller, but I'll gladly make the computer work slightly harder considering that the result is the same speed (C++ is often faster than C, in practice).

The downside I care about is compilation speed. Simple C projects compile/link faster than modern C++ ones, even though the code for the same functionality is far more brittle, unsafe, and opaque

mihai_ionic2• 13 years ago

That said, avoiding libraries (especially avoiding templates and just using void*-like stuff) does keep binaries/libs smaller, but I'll gladly make the computer work slightly harder considering that the result is the same speed (C++ is often faster than C, in practice).

This should not be an issue with modern C++ compilers. If two template instantiations generate the same or similar code, they will be merged and useless code is removed by dead code elimination.

The downside I care about is compilation speed. Simple C projects compile/link faster than modern C++ ones, even though the code for the same functionality is far more brittle, unsafe, and opaque

At the same time, a lot of potential for optimization is lost by barricading everything between translation units and/or behind opaque pointers. While yes, LTO is supposed to help there, all those memory accesses make it infinitely harder for the compiler to prove trivial properties about the data flow. See also this recent presentation by someone who has a lot more experience than me with writing compiler backends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eR34r7HOU14

saurik• 13 years ago

This should not be an issue with modern C++ compilers. If two template instantiations generate the same or similar code, they will be merged and useless code is removed by dead code elimination.

FWIW, MSVC does this, maybe Intel's as well, but other toolchains do not.

Superleroy• 13 years ago

I've seen this mentality time and time again at the company i work, the old C programmers who tried C++ once and found a thing or two that didn't appeal to them and from that time on C++ was marked as BS.

Linus Torvalds - C++ is a horrible language

Related Stories