5 ms·

herb sutter and the c++ community as a whole have put a lot of energy into improving the language and reducing UB; this has been a primary focus of C++26. they

by ada0000 9mo ago

herb sutter and the c++ community as a whole have put a lot of energy into improving the language and reducing UB; this has been a primary focus of C++26. they are not encouraging people to “churn out more broken garbage”, they are encouraging people to write better code in the language they have spent years developing libraries and expertise in.

lordgroff 9mo ago
And for which there's often no serious alternative to in many domains anyway.
- ada0000 9mo ago
  even when there are alternatives, sometimes it makes sense to use a library like Qt in its native language with its native documentation rather than a binding - if you can do so safely
- nemetroid 9mo ago
  Yes, many or even most domains where C++ sees a large market share are domains with no other serious alternative. But this is an indictment of C++ and not praise. What it tells us is that when there are other viable options, C++ is rarely chosen. The number of such domains has gone down over time, and will probably continue to do so.
  - pron 9mo ago
    The number of domains where low-level languages are required, and that includes C, C++, Rust, and Zig, has gone down over time and continues to do so. All of these languages are rarely chosen when there are viable alternatives (and I say "rarely" taking into account total number of lines of code, not necessarily number of projects). Nevertheless, there are still some very important domains where such languages are needed, and Rust's adoption rate is low enough to suggest serious problems with it, too. When language X offers significant advantages over language Y, its adoption compared to Y is usually quite fast (which is why most languages get close to their peak adoption relatively quickly, i.e. within about a decade). If we ignore external factors like experience and ecosystem size, Rust is a better language than C++, but not better enough to justify faster adoption, which is exactly what we're seeing. It's certainly gained some sort of foothold, but as it's already quite old, it's doubtful it will ever be as popular as C++ is now, let alone in its heydey. To get there, Rust's market share will need to grow by about a factor of 10 compared to what it is now, and while that's possible, if it does that it will have been the first language to ever do so at such an advanced age.
    - tialaramex 9mo ago
      > When language X offers significant advantages over language Y So e.g. the silver bullet characteristics reported by Google among others in "More fast and fix things" ? https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move-fast-fix-things.html https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move... There's always resistance to change. It's a constant, and as our industry itself ages it gets a bit worse. If you use libc++ did you know your sort didn't have O(n log n) worst case performance until part way through the Biden administration? A suitable sorting algorithm was invented back in 1997, those big-O bounds were finally mandated for C++ in 2011, but it still took until a few years ago to actually implement it for Clang.
      - pron 9mo ago
        Except, as you say, all those factors always exist, so we can compare things against each other. No language to date has grown its market share by a factor of ten at such an advanced age [1]. Despite all the hurdles, successful languages have succeeded faster. Of course, it's possible that Rust will somehow manage to grow a lot, yet significantly slower than all other languages, but there's no reason to expect that as the likely outcome. Yes, it certainly has significant adoption, but that adoption is significantly lower than all languages that ended up where C++ is or higher. [1]: In a competitive field, with selection pressure, the speed at which technologies spread is related to their relative advantage, and while slow growth is possible, it's rare because competitive alternatives tend to come up.
        tialaramex 9mo ago
        This sounds like you're just repeating the same claim again. It reminds me a little bit of https://xkcd.com/1122/ https://xkcd.com/1122/ We get it, if you squint hard at the numbers you can imagine you're seeing a pattern, and if you're wrong well, just squint harder and a new pattern emerges, it's fool proof.
        pron 9mo ago
        Observing a pattern with a causal explanation - in an environment with selective pressure things spread at a rate proportional to their relative competitive advantage (or relative "fitness") - is nothing at all like retroactively finding arbitrary and unexplained correlations. It's more along the lines of "no candidate has won the US presidential election with an approval of under 30% a month before the election". Of course, even that could still happen, but the causal relationship is clear enough so even though a candidate with 30% in the polls a month before the election could win, you'd hardly say that's the safer bet.

by ada0000 9mo ago

lordgroff 9mo ago

And for which there's often no serious alternative to in many domains anyway.

ada0000 9mo ago
even when there are alternatives, sometimes it makes sense to use a library like Qt in its native language with its native documentation rather than a binding - if you can do so safely
nemetroid 9mo ago
Yes, many or even most domains where C++ sees a large market share are domains with no other serious alternative. But this is an indictment of C++ and not praise. What it tells us is that when there are other viable options, C++ is rarely chosen. The number of such domains has gone down over time, and will probably continue to do so.
- pron 9mo ago
  The number of domains where low-level languages are required, and that includes C, C++, Rust, and Zig, has gone down over time and continues to do so. All of these languages are rarely chosen when there are viable alternatives (and I say "rarely" taking into account total number of lines of code, not necessarily number of projects). Nevertheless, there are still some very important domains where such languages are needed, and Rust's adoption rate is low enough to suggest serious problems with it, too. When language X offers significant advantages over language Y, its adoption compared to Y is usually quite fast (which is why most languages get close to their peak adoption relatively quickly, i.e. within about a decade). If we ignore external factors like experience and ecosystem size, Rust is a better language than C++, but not better enough to justify faster adoption, which is exactly what we're seeing. It's certainly gained some sort of foothold, but as it's already quite old, it's doubtful it will ever be as popular as C++ is now, let alone in its heydey. To get there, Rust's market share will need to grow by about a factor of 10 compared to what it is now, and while that's possible, if it does that it will have been the first language to ever do so at such an advanced age.
  - tialaramex 9mo ago
    > When language X offers significant advantages over language Y So e.g. the silver bullet characteristics reported by Google among others in "More fast and fix things" ? https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move-fast-fix-things.html https://security.googleblog.com/2025/11/rust-in-android-move... There's always resistance to change. It's a constant, and as our industry itself ages it gets a bit worse. If you use libc++ did you know your sort didn't have O(n log n) worst case performance until part way through the Biden administration? A suitable sorting algorithm was invented back in 1997, those big-O bounds were finally mandated for C++ in 2011, but it still took until a few years ago to actually implement it for Clang.
    - pron 9mo ago
      Except, as you say, all those factors always exist, so we can compare things against each other. No language to date has grown its market share by a factor of ten at such an advanced age [1]. Despite all the hurdles, successful languages have succeeded faster. Of course, it's possible that Rust will somehow manage to grow a lot, yet significantly slower than all other languages, but there's no reason to expect that as the likely outcome. Yes, it certainly has significant adoption, but that adoption is significantly lower than all languages that ended up where C++ is or higher. [1]: In a competitive field, with selection pressure, the speed at which technologies spread is related to their relative advantage, and while slow growth is possible, it's rare because competitive alternatives tend to come up.
      - tialaramex 9mo ago
        This sounds like you're just repeating the same claim again. It reminds me a little bit of https://xkcd.com/1122/ https://xkcd.com/1122/ We get it, if you squint hard at the numbers you can imagine you're seeing a pattern, and if you're wrong well, just squint harder and a new pattern emerges, it's fool proof.
        pron 9mo ago
        Observing a pattern with a causal explanation - in an environment with selective pressure things spread at a rate proportional to their relative competitive advantage (or relative "fitness") - is nothing at all like retroactively finding arbitrary and unexplained correlations. It's more along the lines of "no candidate has won the US presidential election with an approval of under 30% a month before the election". Of course, even that could still happen, but the causal relationship is clear enough so even though a candidate with 30% in the polls a month before the election could win, you'd hardly say that's the safer bet.