[candiodari]

If C++ is so bad then why:

1) are 90% every really large software projects written in C++. All the programs "everybody knows" just happen to be in C++. Examples include Chrome, Windows, Microsoft Office, Adobe tools, KDE, Autodesk, ...

Clearly those programs have massive scopes, large complexity, the need for extensive abstractions, the need for large teams cooperating, tests, ... all the stuff we value as programmers.

2) Are all programs in most other languages so ... small. In scope, in features, in ... Just look at Go programs on github. Or python ones.

Very large Python projects are a few 10's of thousands of lines of code. And they are limited by their complexity. Somehow C++ programs seem to have less of this problem.

Very large javascript projects don't even seem to get above a few thousand lines of code. And reading them, I can see why. Typescript at least seems to match Python in how much complexity it can contain without imposing too much of a burden, but that language doesn't match C++ either.

Most of those fancy languages are artificially limited in some ways. For instance, you cannot easily link QT into Go (nor can you do that with many other libraries, GTK has the same problem). C++ does not have that problem, and if it does, you can solve it. I do not claim doing so is easy, but it can be done. You're not stuck. Go on IOS ? It sort of works, with a boatload of limitations that make it utterly unworkable. C++ on IOS ? It works, with less limitations than Objective C.

I feel like C++ gets a much worse reputation than it deserves. Much worse. It is not the solution to everything, of course.

[sgift]

1) I know so many programs which are the same size or bigger than your "well-known" programs you probably never heard of but still use daily - They are just not desktop programs, a place where C++, for various reasons, is often the language of choice, but desktop programs are (for better or worse) just a small subset of all programs written.

2) See answer above.

> I feel like C++ gets a much worse reputation than it deserves. Much worse. It is not the solution to everything, of course.

In the end it all boils down to Stroustrups quote about programming languages: 'There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses'

[mathw]

Point 1 is mostly down to history I suspect. The big Adobe stuff is in C++ because they started writing them when C++ was The Thing. Probably quite cutting-edge then (not that it doesn't have some cutting-edge features now of course, that's what makes C++17 and C++20 and so on worth watching). Windows, Office likewise, although I've always assumed that an increasing chunk of Office is now written in C#. I have no evidence of that by the way. KDE - again of its time. Autodesk, likewise.

And then that gives you a huge historical inertia. Chrome started out using KDE's rendering engine, which was written in C++, at a time when writing cross-platform GUIs wasn't really feasible in anything else if you wanted it to also be reasonably fast.

And they stay in C++ because changing languages is a right pain in the whatsit, and C++'s ABI is so variable across platforms and compiler versions through history that integrating components in other languages is often not worth the effort to maintain. Not that it hasn't been done, of course, and done well. Look at how Firefox are now integrating Rust components in their C++ codebase - although they're doing it by relying on Rust's ability to expose a perfect C ABI, and C++'s ability to call it.

Point 2... yeah. I get this. C++ has a higher complexity bound than many languages, especially dynamic ones. C++ used as C++ rather than C-with-classes has a strong type checker and some very robust capabilities around memory management, program integrity, metaprogramming (even though the syntax is dire and the compile times are horrible). C++ expertise in large software construction is widely available. C++ will compile down to efficient machine code that runs well on many platforms. These are all huge advantages in large projects.

Python has its troubles with concurrency, and the lack of type information in the source code to help maintainers. Go is just too young - I suspect we're going to see some really giant Go projects emerging over the next ten years, especially outside the space you can see on GitHub. There will be big enterprises deploying enormous Go codebases, although they'll likely be made up of multiple components instead of one giant thing like we used to do. Rust's too young, Haskell's got the chops but is too weird for most people (and its own problems, although Stack has really helped with the developer experience), JavaScript is entirely unsuitable to a large maintainable codebase. I'd guess TypeScript can probably go a bit further then Python in that space, at least until Python's new type annotations start getting fully checked by tooling at which point it returns to parity (or exceeds it, due to not being JavaScript in disguise. Guess what, I don't like JavaScript, who'd've thought!)

But still we've got C++'s inertia to thank for a lot of this. It's huge, it's old, it's still being developed and still being used and there's a lot of knowledge and a lot of capability out there.

But then look at newer disciplines. Look at mobile apps - yes you can write C++, but the native languages of Android are Java and Kotlin, and of iOS are Objective-C and Swift. What are new developers going to want to do - learn Kotlin and Swift or figure out how to shim C++ into those platforms via the variously awkward methods available?

What about the web? How many web applications are written in C++? Very few, I suspect. It's all C#, Java, PHP, Node, Python and other modern things which may or may not be considered sexy.

C++ dominates in the older disciplines, the older software that's still here and we still use and will use for a very long time.

I think elsewhere it's being passed by, especially as we get languages like Rust and Go which are considered as possible replacements in the "I really need this to go as fast as possible" camp.

It's a shame really, as C++ is still a powerful, impressive language and the new stuff is fantastic. But I always felt when I was working as a C++ developer that I wished I could turn off those C-compatible core behaviours and completely block those implicit-but-dangerous type conversions, and get the compiler to scream at me about dangerous pointer usage (I believe something along those lines is in the works for a future standard).

And also a shame about D, which has its followers but has been largely ignored, overshadowed by C++ to start with and later passed by the new languages which get all the hype.