How HHVM Uses Modern C++ for Fun and Profit (2014) [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqK8Yuoq4ig

73 48 11 years ago

I don't like how C was completely ignored when talking about languages with comparable performance. :p

The Zend Engine 3 (aka the stock PHP 7 interpreter) is, according to one HHVM developer, 'embarassingly competitive on the test suites', and it's written in C.

/rant

C++ is probably much nicer to maintain, though. C ends up being macro hell.

Demiurge3• 11 years ago

He did not ignore C, he said C++ is much easier to maintain and lets you use friendly features when it's not performance expensive. They use template as much as possible over macros, C++ debuggers, lambdas, ref counting.

TazeTSchnitzel5• 11 years ago

I haven't watched the last 10 minutes yet, but there's no mention of C in the talk before that. The only comparison is to Assembly.

marktangotango• 11 years ago

Interesting, do you have link where that comment was made?

TazeTSchnitzel5• 11 years ago

http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/21019002#21...

peterashford3• 11 years ago

Nobody uses C++ for fun. Unless they're a masochist.

krapp3• 11 years ago

Odd... I feel the same way about Python.

peterashford3• 11 years ago

Not fond of significant white space?

dmpk2k3• 11 years ago

I do, and I'm not a masochist. I use it to write small games on my own time.

I used to loathe C++, but the C++11/14 dialect makes things much more pleasant. There's still a lot of details you need to worry about, but crucially these are details that other languages rarely give you a choice about. The only real alternative was C, but I'm tired of reinventing wheels and C++ has the STL. C also doesn't have the same support for value types which C++ does, and value types are really nice to use.

harry87• 11 years ago

Value types, as opposed to polymorphic types, ie pointers (including references)?

struct IntForFoo { int value; };

when you use it you write a function that takes an IntForFoo as one of its arguments and you get type safety over other ints. Gently snarl at anyone who does a .value outside such a function. Include a constructor function, an assignment function... Remember that that typedefs just lie to you about the type, they don't change it for type checking...

If you need to generate code, do it, macros and templates are just really crappy ways of generating code; you can do a lot better when you need to. But how often do you really need to and how often are you worshipping at the false idol of "must be general so can be used for 100 years" when that's really not the purpose of the code?

Polymorphism and templates are overrated by C++ designers you don't actually need them and they encourage some awful designs.

peterashford3• 11 years ago

Alright, to be fair I haven't coded in C++ for ~10 years so maybe I might just be a little smidgeon behind the times =)

hendzen• 11 years ago

I use C++ for fun. Mostly because it's actually quite nice if you know what parts of the language to use.

C++ could really use a "C++: The Good Parts" book.

harry87• 11 years ago

It's got one! "The C Programming Language" by Kernighan and Richie ;-)

What it could really use some deprecation of the more idiotic, dangerous, useless features (eg explicit constructors should be the default, unbraced single line blocks only introduce bugs and have no positive value at all). They should also mandate that standards conforming STL implementations ship with a standard set of benchmarks you can run on the hardware you're targeting. All the C++ "anointed smart people" complain people use the wrong STL datastructures but don't show any cleverness at all in solving that problem.

No 2 C++ hackers agree on what constitutes "The Good Parts" witness every single C++ style guide ever endorsing a different subset of the language. C++11/14 has not changed this. Modulo different targets make that subset different from the point of view of the very same hacker.

pjmlp4• 11 years ago

Just get the "Tour of C++" from Bjarne. It exactly that.

http://www.amazon.com/Tour-In-Depth-Series-Bjarne-Stroustrup...

shmerl2• 11 years ago

Nonsense. C++ is fun!

pjmlp4• 11 years ago

I do.

When faced with the sad fact that Turbo Pascal was PC only I had to choose another language.

The year was 1993 and C already looked dated when compared with what Turbo Pascal was capable of. Also when compared against Modula-2, which was on the way out as well.

So I went C++, which even with C++ ARM compatibility issues, was way safer than C.

Nowadays there are plenty of compiled languages to choose from, but between C++ and C I only pick C if obliged to do so.

TazeTSchnitzel5• 11 years ago

I was expecting a talk about how cool C++11 features are. It was actually a talk about how C++ lets you be super close-to-the-metal and do ridiculous performance hacks. Interesting.

simula67• 11 years ago

I remember someone from Facebook saying that ( can't find the link ATM ) when HPHP was being built there was a competing project to trans-compile PHP to Java. In the end they compared the performance and found that the C++ was faster and went with it. Is it true ?

If it is, I wonder how they feel now that they have given up speed improvements and built a VM in search of other advantages. At least if they had chosen the JVM they could have taken advantage of interoperability that JVM provides with other languages to convert at least part of their code base to JVM languages, thereby possibly improving maintainability.

TazeTSchnitzel5• 11 years ago

Are you possibly referring to Quercus? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_%28software%29#Quercus

How HHVM Uses Modern C++ for Fun and Profit (2014) [video]

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