[rualca]

> TBH the length that C++ goes to replace every single use of the preprocessor "just because" is close to zealotry.

This comment is short-sighted.

Take for example C++'s use of include guards to use translation units instead of modules to just compile a damn file. No one in their right mind would argue in favour of a preprocessor with #include instead of proper modules if they were to develop a new programming language.

Using #define to specify constant values is also absolutely awful.

[inglor_cz]

Oh my. Once I spent two hours chasing a bug in my colleague's code (uni, not corp), until I arrived at this gem of his:

#define ZERO 1

[flohofwoe]

IMHO #include for making declarations visible to other compilation units is the one big feature where ditching the preprocessors makes sense, at least in C++ where headers contain both declarations and implementation code (it's not as critical for C). Simply being able to include a file anywhere in the source is still useful (simply as a generic text-processing feature) so #include shouldn't be removed if sharing declarations if solved differently (for instance through a module system).

Same with #define, no harm in adding actual constants to the language since it's a simple, straightforward and expected feature. But that's no reason getting rid of #define because that's also useful as a catch-all text replacement which doesn't work on the language-level (and that's useful in many situations).