[guitarbill]

It doesn't feel much different to any other language that people have been burned by (e.g. Javascript). I have some bad C++ experienced, and I know enough programmers I respect who stick to C over C++.

Of course it's difficult to equate that kind of advice/feedback to negative comments on HN. But often, there's some kernel of truth there. So while there's some merit to C++, the criticism can equally be valid. And keeping the underlying complexity of C++ (similar to how Carbon will) might not meaningfully simplify development).

[einpoklum]

> I have some bad C++ experienced, and I know enough programmers I respect who stick to C over C++.

Do you know such people who work on large software systems, as opposed to, say, micro-controller firmware, or kernel drivers and such?

(Asking as a person who maintains an important(ish) C library for embedded coders: https://github.com/eyalroz/printf)

[mek6800d2]

I used to work for a company whose product was a fairly large satellite control center software system (and we could supply hardware if needed), written in C++. It's used for a lot of commercial fleets. For example, back in the 2000s, when I worked on it, it was used for CDRADIO/Sirius's fleet. (I don't know if it's still used for SiriusXM's Sirius satellites, if any.)

I liked C++ in some ways, but as a whole, I think, C++ didn't reduce -- and may have increased -- the complexity of our software compared to the complexity of an equivalent C implementation. (I'm talking about the complexity of the software itself, not the complexities of the tasks it was doing.) The distribution of the complexity in the code would just have been different between the two implementations. IMHO.

So I mostly stick with C or other non-C++ languages now. Of course, C++ has expanded and changed greatly since then.

[ncmncm]

You would be very pleasantly surprised at how programming in C+ is, today, vs. pre-C++11. With C++20, the language has got even nicer to use.

[throwaway894345]

I remember really enjoying C++ circa 2012, but I really hated scripting my own build tooling via CMake or manually wrangling dependencies. This was the stuff that pushed me out of C++. Fortunately, Go had just hit 1.0 and it fixed many of the problems out of the gate, and I didn’t really need the performance that C++ offered.

[ncmncm]

Even CMake has got less annoying.

[throwaway894345]

It had nowhere to go but up! (: Jokes aside, I’m glad to hear it.

[1024core]

> Do you know such people who work on large software systems, as opposed to, say, micro-controller firmware, or kernel drivers and such?

Redis is written entirely in C.

[jrockway]

I really don't think Redis is a large software system. Things like Firefox, Chrome, AAA games, etc. are what I'd call large C++ systems.

[summerlight]

I don't think that Redis qualifies as a large software system in the modern standard. In fact, it's popular because it's simple, small and understandable compared to its competitors which comprises of many millions of lines of code.

[einpoklum]

Redis is ~200K lines of C code, so it's relevant project-size-wise, but - redis was started in C, right? It's not like developers now have the option to "go C++" without a company-wide decision.

Still, if could quote Redis developers making the GP's claim, that would count.

[guitarbill]

Some software for storage products is C. I imagine other conservative industries could be similar.

But I have also heard that although the senior devs would prefer to stick to C for technical reasons, they have started to use/embrace C++ for hiring reasons (since many grads are taught C++). So I wouldn't be surprised if finding "pure" C codebases/ones without C++ is getting harder. The eco-system around C++ (e.g. test frameworks) certainly seemed healthier. It's been a few years though, so I might not have a good picture any more.

[Galanwe]

On the top of my head, for large open source C codebases that are not system/kernel/controller I guess Python, Ruby and Redis would be good examples.

I do myself fall in the category of people sticking to C over C++. I used to love C++ back until c++03, then completely hated the whole "new generation c++" orientation that started with c++11 and pretty much decided to not touch c++ anymore.

[jcelerier]

I think that "large" really needs to be defined here. CPython is 350kloc of C. I have seen C++ codebases with more source files than there are lines of code in that. Just the "base" module of Qt is ~4million loc