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0 pointsfsloth8y ago0 comments

"You haven't looked at C++ lately if you think it's the same as it was in 2004."

"If you're writing C++ code that is consistent with 2004 C++ then you're writing a really bad version of "C with classes", not C++."

I applaud your attempt at an authoritative voice. But you focus on mostly technical trivia that are thin scaffolding on top of the language. I agree modern C++ is nice but it's the same language still.

"This is a completely different language now and the code you write looks nothing like 2004 C++ code."

Are you trolling? This reads like a transcript from a TV commercial.

0 comments

khedoros18y ago

They sound like they're echoing the kinds of things that are normally said about C++11.

> I agree modern C++ is nice but it's the same language still.

Well...in the same sense that any language is the same language after you add a bunch of things to it that weren't there before and shift to using those new features as idiomatic parts of the language. I would expect C++ written in 2004 to use different patterns than C++ written in 2017. Not "completely different"...but different.

fslothOP8y ago

Idiomatic sounds like preference to dogmatism rather than pragmatism which is generally the worse tradeoff.

I would say generally C++ style has evolved through last decades with people understanding class based architecture as an antipattern and data pipelines based on preferably immutable data as the more robust and understandable approach. This has nothing to do with language standards or 'idiomatic' constructs - both can be expressed as perfectly elegant C++, using the '98 or '11 or '17 variant.

But anyway, within this context - refactoring old code - I would not expect a legacy codebase to resemble 2017 C++ as much as 1997 C++. This is the main reason I find the claim of methods to understand circa 2004 C++ to be outdated to be silly.

khedoros18y ago

> Idiomatic sounds like preference to dogmatism rather than pragmatism which is generally the worse tradeoff.

That's never been the way that I've read it, and it's not how I meant it. New language constructs allow for more-natural ways for the code to express the intent of the programmer, replacing the use of older constructs in the places that they were clumsy.

The entire point is to make the language more practical. Patterns of use in a language aren't idiomatic because of dogma (or at least, they shouldn't be). They're idiomatic because they're a clear and elegant way (or at least the most elegant way available) to implement something.

> I would not expect a legacy codebase to resemble 2017 C++ as much as 1997 C++.

Agreed, but then we come back to the fact that we might refactor a 1997 codebase differently in 2004 than in 2017.

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0 pointsfsloth8y ago0 comments

"You haven't looked at C++ lately if you think it's the same as it was in 2004."

"If you're writing C++ code that is consistent with 2004 C++ then you're writing a really bad version of "C with classes", not C++."

"This is a completely different language now and the code you write looks nothing like 2004 C++ code."

Are you trolling? This reads like a transcript from a TV commercial.

0 comments

khedoros18y ago

They sound like they're echoing the kinds of things that are normally said about C++11.

> I agree modern C++ is nice but it's the same language still.

fslothOP8y ago

Idiomatic sounds like preference to dogmatism rather than pragmatism which is generally the worse tradeoff.

khedoros18y ago

> Idiomatic sounds like preference to dogmatism rather than pragmatism which is generally the worse tradeoff.

> I would not expect a legacy codebase to resemble 2017 C++ as much as 1997 C++.

Agreed, but then we come back to the fact that we might refactor a 1997 codebase differently in 2004 than in 2017.

1 more reply

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