> This is what the "modules" feature in C++20 addresses.
This is the perennial "If you only used modern C++, you'd be fine."
Sorry. People have been repeating this for 15 years, and it hasn't gotten any more true.
For example, C++ still doesn't have a useful string type--everybody rolls their own. How do you interoperate when 2 different C++ libraries can't even agree on something as basic as what a "string" is? The existence of "header-only" libraries and the contortions they go through is a tacit admission that compiling and linking C++ is still a disaster. C++ still doesn't have a stable, documented ABI--so everybody defaults to C (thus throwing away any theoretical usefulness C++ might have). Embedded shuts down 90+% of C++ beyond "C with classes" because they can't use exceptions and can't allocate memory dynamically. The preprocessor is a brain parasite that has grown with C/C++ and can't be removed anymore without killing the host. etc.
In fact, I would argue the lack of stable ABI is the only thing propping C++ up. Because the C++ ABI is so shitty, you have to make the top-level code C++ which then calls into the other libraries and subsystems which actually have useful, stable and documented ABIs and interfaces.
If C++ had an ABI that didn't suck, you could invert that, drive the C++ from the better language, and everybody would relegate C++ to increasingly tinier libraries until they could excise the remaining code and throw it into the trash.
I feel for the people who put in their entire lifetime trying to "improve" C++. However, it's time to admit that C++ can't be fixed and move on.
How amazing would it be to have people like Stroustrup and Sutter being paid to work on a language that doesn't start with unfixable suckage?
To be clear, I’m in the “C++ sucks” camp. But I don’t agree that C++ “can’t be fixed”. I’d rather say that some problems with C++ can’t be fixed, but others can be.
People will still use it, and that is entirely sensible and rational, and it makes sense to improve it. Long-term, maybe C++ will fade into the same kind of sunset that Fortran and Cobol currently occupy.
I’m not gonna make fun of Fortran users, or tell them to move on. There’s even a Fortran 2018.
Trying to allocate people to only the “best” possible work—say, replacing C++—is just poor allocation of resources.
This is the perennial "If you only used modern C++, you'd be fine."
Sorry. People have been repeating this for 15 years, and it hasn't gotten any more true.
For example, C++ still doesn't have a useful string type--everybody rolls their own. How do you interoperate when 2 different C++ libraries can't even agree on something as basic as what a "string" is? The existence of "header-only" libraries and the contortions they go through is a tacit admission that compiling and linking C++ is still a disaster. C++ still doesn't have a stable, documented ABI--so everybody defaults to C (thus throwing away any theoretical usefulness C++ might have). Embedded shuts down 90+% of C++ beyond "C with classes" because they can't use exceptions and can't allocate memory dynamically. The preprocessor is a brain parasite that has grown with C/C++ and can't be removed anymore without killing the host. etc.
In fact, I would argue the lack of stable ABI is the only thing propping C++ up. Because the C++ ABI is so shitty, you have to make the top-level code C++ which then calls into the other libraries and subsystems which actually have useful, stable and documented ABIs and interfaces.
If C++ had an ABI that didn't suck, you could invert that, drive the C++ from the better language, and everybody would relegate C++ to increasingly tinier libraries until they could excise the remaining code and throw it into the trash.
I feel for the people who put in their entire lifetime trying to "improve" C++. However, it's time to admit that C++ can't be fixed and move on.
How amazing would it be to have people like Stroustrup and Sutter being paid to work on a language that doesn't start with unfixable suckage?