[bsder]

> It’s literally EVERY web browser that anyone uses.

And is a fine example of path dependence.

No one can write a browser in any other language not because C++ is necessarily better but because the activation energy to bootstrap to a useful browser is so large (for example, one must provide a smoking fast Javascript engine before one even considers the web page rendering pipeline).

It will be interesting to see how much of the Firefox codebase gets taken over by Rust as time passes.

[pnako]

Basically, C++ developers (like me) are stupid. We're like primitive species, stuck with C++ because we can't understand superior languages. The Lisp developers tried to bring us the light, but we chased them away by throwing rocks at them. Now the Rust evangelists are doing the same thing, but I'm afraid we might take a break from writing video games, stock exchange software, safety-critical software, CAD packages, web browsers, video codecs and the like, to throw rocks at them.

My point is: maybe C++ actually _is_ the superior language. It can't be a coincidence that all the best software projects tend to be written in C++, and not in Haskell or whatever.

[bsder]

> My point is: maybe C++ actually _is_ the superior language. It can't be a coincidence that all the best software projects tend to be written in C++, and not in Haskell or whatever.

If we're going by best software written, I suspect that means C is the better language than C++ by a wide margin. It would be interesting as to whether Visual Basic would be superior on that axis as well.

C++ is the better language--except that we always have to expose a C FFI because nobody seems to have enough critical mass to stabilize the library ABI. C++ is the better language--except that Apple wrote another language because they don't believe that and that Mozilla wrote Rust because C++ wasn't good enough. C++ is the better language--as long as you have a new codebase that only uses the latest features and Satan help you if you have stuff from pre-2005 because God won't be enough. C++ is the better language--as long as compile time isn't an issue.

I can go on if you wish...

I don't think C++ developers are stupid and those choosing to start new projects in it generally have really good reasons for doing so. I also think that many older projects are in C or C++ via path dependence because C++ was the superior choice when the project started and now they have far too much code to switch.

I also believe this will be why Rust eventually becomes a very important language--Rust allows you to modernize that old codebase in a piecemeal fashion.

[ahartmetz]

Dunno. As a mainly C++ developer I think Rust is a real alternative because it tries to solve the same problems better. Lisp and Haskell do not solve the same problems. Huge Lisp codebases probably become hard to understand quickly, and both Lisp and Haskell don't produce very efficient code (or make it hard to produce efficient code).

[pnako]

Time will tell. At the moment I'm not convinced. Rust is a marginal improvement which is not worth the trade-offs in terms of immaturity, lack of libraries, books, standardization, etc. It might end up just like D. Or it might actually find itself a viable niche.

[ahartmetz]

AFAICS D screwed up with its "optional" but really not optional if you want to use the standard library garbage collection. Rust contains no such mistakes, and seems to contain fewers mistakes than C++. Any experienced C++ programmer should know that C++ contains plenty of mistakes. Exceptions are very awkward, the string class is useless, hash maps are much slower than they could be (the std API enforces that), modules should have appeared 20 years ago, non-const references as stealth pointers are bad for readability, [...]

[Laakeri]

Why C++ string class is useless?

[ahartmetz]

It's basically no better than vector<my_char_type> - i.e. it has no Unicode support whatsoever and very few string-specific convenience methods. Using algorithms is possible, but tedious.

Because I often work with Qt, I'm comparing it with QString, which is much more than a vector of chars. https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qstring.html

[the_af]

> "[Lisp and] Haskell don't produce very efficient code (or make it hard to produce efficient code)."

Curious here. Are you speaking from experience -- i.e. you tried and failed -- or is this simply something you guess must be true? People write high-performance software in Haskell, and it's their tool of choice.

[jcelerier]

> People write high-performance software in Haskell, and it's their tool of choice.

I've heard of those but have never managed to see one. Do you have some examples ? (to give you my "baseline" - handling >500k messages/second on a desktop cpu for instance as this is something quite easily achievable in C++)