[rootlocus]

Under every modern, shiny, abstract, high-level feature of the language or the standard library there are layers and layers of legacy cruft. Every aspect the language has experimented with has to be supported by the new features, making simple things like the Variant type for example, very difficult to implement correctly [1].

C++ is nice and good until you hit a bug that leaks an abstraction and you realise you barely understand 10% of the language, and you'll never understand it completely, because people spend their entire careers trying to track down how language features interact and where they explode, and they're never finished.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUxhwf7gYLg

[belter]

What a tour de force! Thanks for the link. It beats my previous favorite C++ presentation:

"CppCon 2018: Nicolai Josuttis “The Nightmare of Initialization in C++” https://youtu.be/7DTlWPgX6zs

Next Halloween I will dress up as std::variant

[tialaramex]

Also, I'm fairly convinced that when they chose not to take Epochs for C++ 20 they sealed the long term fate of the language.

Epochs was the only halfway practical way to attempt the ever elusive step B of the "Smaller, better C++" idea, the part where you toss away all the stuff nobody needs. For many years now, the protestation has been that it's a great idea but first a few more things must be added. And then a few more. And a few more. Bjarne himself has a laundry list. Adding things to C++ is extremely ugly but it can be done and is still being done. However removing things is hard, and Epochs proposed a practical way to begin that work. It was shot down and I think years from now a C++ post mortem will pronounce that as at least contributing to the outcome if not outright the primary cause.

Epochs would have been really hard to do in C++ 20. But it isn't getting easier and the will to attempt such a thing seems to me to be finite.

[DSingularity]

Like std::vector<bool>. Damn you std::vector<bool>.

[skulk]

Isn't that the poster-child of template metaprogramming? Being able to choose a different sub-byte layout for your container type depending on the type parameter? What problems are you running into when using std::vector<bool>?

[DSingularity]

Templating has nothing to do with my hate. It’s the fact that for all other vector types you can assume that index-based access only conflict for the same index. The only exception is…

Of course it’s unlikely for you to know this because who knows all the nuances of C++ so you end up with a race in your code. Those can be very hairy to crash, reproduce, and debug.

[whatroot8]

Yes so again then; why Rust?

Surely shining light on and fixing those issues would have resulted in C/C++ essentially becoming what Rust hopes to be.

But western kids needed to found new big business and institutionalize math.

Seems the west has a real issue with oligarchs needing to manage the masses. No one can be rich unless an institution has decided they are correctly rich.