[chrismorgan]

Robert is an expert C/C++ programmer, but understands the problems with those languages, which has led to articles like http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/07/confession-of-cc-program....

Robert is now a Rust proponent because it works.

From today’s article, I think this is the money quote:

> My sincere hope is that people will at least stop choosing C for new projects. At this point, doing so is professional negligence.

[blub]

I don't doubt they're a competent programmer, but I do have some doubts that they're an expert in C++. Two reasons why:

1) They made incorrect claims about C++ in relation to Rust before: http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/02/what-rust-can-do-that-ot... and http://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/04/rust-optimizations-that-...

2) The Mozilla C++ code base is old and very raw pointer/reference heavy and it doesn't seem to be written with safety in mind.

Their wikis also don't have any particularly good security guidelines. Maybe the good stuff is kept private, who knows.

Saying that someone was a distinguished engineer at Mozilla is not saying much about their abilities of writing modern or safe C++.

[roca]

Hi!

Yeah I made a mistake once. It happens.

If having a PhD in computer science (programming languages), being reasonably smart, and using the language for 20 years (up to and including most C++14 stuff) doesn't make you an expert in that language, then your language is far too difficult.

In fact, C++ is far too difficult and there are very few genuine experts in it. For example, who can explain why using push_back on a vector<map<T,unique_ptr>> is not conformant to the Standard, without looking it up? (I'll save you some time: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=683729...)

There's also a definitional bait-and-switch going on here. C++ proponents use "C++" to mean "the language that lots of projects have been using for 20 years and lots of programmers know" when espousing its popularity. But when necessary, the meaning changes to some "'modern', 'safe' subset of C++" ... that few programmers know well and few projects stick to rigorously. The exact definition of that subset changes depending on the situation, too.

[blub]

Hi. In the linked "confessions" blog you've taken the path of making some claims about a topic and supported them through who you are, instead of facts. People who disagree with your claims will question if who you are is relevant.

C++ is difficult, and there are few experts. My thesis is that one doesn't need to be an expert to write safe C++ code, but they do need access to quality libraries focused on safety, and good practices focused on safety. Banning some unsafe C functions, saying "use smart pointers" or making a list of UB is useful, but not enough.

C++ can be written much more safely than it normally is, but it seems that's not happening. I'm not sure why, it could be that the performance loss of additional runtime verification is not acceptable, that the adequate learning resources are not available or that it's not an important topic for the C++ community.

P.S: I'll gladly have the kind of error you linked to. It's at compile time, I will try to figure it out and worst case rewrite my code. UB is the problem.