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by BubRoss 2228 days ago
An all or nothing approach to auto ends up being silly for reasons of clarity and specificity in types. Auto with compound types makes programs easier to read and write, especially if an IDE is there to expand complex type information. If the type is small, basic, intrinsic, etc. then auto can be a hindrance.
1 comments
badsectoracula 2228 days ago
> An all or nothing approach to auto ends up being silly

I already wrote that there are some cases where auto is necessary (usually when used with more recent C++ features).

> especially if an IDE is there to expand complex type information

And i also already wrote that this information is not only often cumbersome to obtain but also such an IDE is often not available - e.g. in a web-based code review tool which also happens to be an environment where you want the code to be most understandable.

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BubRoss 2228 days ago
What I'm saying is that auto is very useful and not an exotic or niche feature, it just works the best when not using it in places where a type definition is already small or direct.

This usually means types that are from inside the scope of another class. Compound types that are used frequently can actually be aliased.

Also writing programs that are clear when reading from plain text is great, but I don't think that should ever be a higher priority then what it is like to work with inside an IDE. The days of writing programs with notepad are over thankfully. Languages aren't the only way to make programming easier and aren't even where the low hanging fruit is. People get caught up in languages, but tools can help much more without the herculean effort of redoing decades of work, so I lean on them whenever possible.

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badsectoracula 2227 days ago
Well, i already wrote about my thoughts on auto, so i do not see a reason to repeat them.

However, about IDEs, you still ignore that code is not only worked with inside IDEs - i already wrote twice the case of a code review tool... have you ever worked on a team with code reviews done by a web-based tool? Or even with a source control program that you want to check the differences between commits that someone else made long ago (they may not even be at the company anymore) and the diff tool obviously has no idea about types and such?

There are many reasons for why you need to work with code outside of an IDE and none of them have to do with using Notepad to write the code.

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