[je42]

- reasonable organized code doesn't take hours. even template heavy code is quite fast these days

- templates are type safe. it is just the error messages are not helpful a lot of times. C++20's concepts should help

- circular references. that's a thing in C as well. as soon as you need interact with your libraries user to allocate/deallocate resources.

C++ has a large surface to interact with. Yes you can shot yourself in your foot. However, the more you know you can use the features to your advantage instead of shotting yourself in the foot. At the point you gain more than you lose.

[eru]

Templates are duck typing at C++ compile time (which is their runtime). Yes, concepts should help.

'Modules via copy-and-paste' (= #include) is what I would hurl at C++ these days. Though they are working on that as well, I heard. Though https://vector-of-bool.github.io/2019/01/27/modules-doa.html doesn't sound hopeful.

[rumanator]

> Templates are duck typing at C++ compile time (which is their runtime).

That description only applies of you venture into the dark realm of template metaprogramming, and anyone who ventures into those lands is wise enough to understand that the tool is not the one to blame if one decides to abuse a feature to apply it in a way it was not (initially) designed to be used.

[LessDmesg]

You must be trolling... Templates in C++ ARE for metarogramming. The fact that they work as a glorified text substitution (and they are only coming around to fix them in 2020) leaves no apology for the tool.

[rumanator]

> You must be trolling... Templates in C++ ARE for metarogramming.

That's an ignorant statement both wrt generic programming (you know, the whole purpose of C++ templates) as well as the history of C++, in particularly how C++ template metaprogramming was discovered by accident after C++ templates were already implemented, widely used (see the STL), and standardized.

[eru]

Template metaprogramming makes things harder, but even in the most boring C++ hello world program, you have someone misusing a bit-shift operator for IO.

Concepts would presumably enforce some kind of thematic relationship between different overloads for the same group of functions and operators. (At least that's how we are doing it in Haskell with typeclasses. But we have a more forgiving syntax that allows us to make new operators.)

[LessDmesg]

Just a few days ago I've read accounts of C++ projects compiling for hours because C++ has a buggy compilation process, e.g. it copies and pastes every header everywhere instead of only one copy. Don't blame developers for obviously flawed language standards.

Templates are of course type unsafe, I'm not sure why you're lying while also admitting that they will only become type-safe in C++20.

Circular references deserves more comment: there is a difference between unmanaged and managed memory. C is unapologetically unmanaged, which cements its position on the embedded scene. But C++ has tried to be the in-between language: you have your raw pointers, and you have your refcount GC (“smart pointers"). And the thing that strikes me is the Cppistas have overwhelmingly chosen GC, but their language's GC is the worst kind, with circular references, performance costs (yes, smart pointers have a lot) and ultimately without memory safety (as raw pointers are still there). They've truly chosen tge worst of both worlds yet don't have the integrity to admit that the future is with managed, traced GC. C++ is like driving a car from the fifties and bragging about how comfortable and modern it is with that new internal combustion engine!