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by comex 2388 days ago
> I know only 1 mainstream platform where C++ adds significant friction compared to C, that’s iOS, because their objective C is a superset of C.

Apple’s compiler supports overlaying Objective-C features on top of C++ instead of C; it’s called Objective-C++.
2 comments
Const-me 2388 days ago
I once forked a C library, porting some parts to C++ in the process: https://github.com/Const-me/nanovg/ I’ve retained original C API, only used C++ in the implementation.

Then I’ve got an e-mail from a developer who asked a few things how to back port my changes to C. I answered their questions, but I was curious why. They replied it’s because Objective C and iOS. Personally, I haven’t been developing for iOS for several years, but I don’t think people would do such things for lulz.

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oriolid 2387 days ago
That developer must be misinformed. I have been developing a native component that needs to interface with C++ APIs from the app and Objective C APIs from iOS. The only thing you need to remember is to not mix exceptions from C++ and Objective C. The object models are also incompatible, but the compiler prevents you from mixing them.
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comex 2387 days ago
Also, if C++ is only used in the library implementation... you wouldn't even need Objective-C++ unless you needed to add Objective-C API calls to the library's own source files. Otherwise, you could just compile the library's source files as regular C++, and link them together with your Objective-C code. This works exactly the same way as combining C and C++, and Xcode (the IDE) has no issue with it. So it seems very likely that the developer was misinformed.
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pjmlp 2388 days ago
Except that only old timers, have the Objective-C++ documentation available, because Apple has removed it from their web site.
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