EDIT: I failed to notice the date stamp, you can ignore this.
Jeeze. Linus writes like C++ killed his dog or something.
There's plenty of great C++ 'wins' over C that make just doing everyday programming tasks so much easier and simpler for no cost.
You don't need to write so abstract and in the clouds that it becomes impossible to maintain - I certainly don't.
And frankly, you can shoot yourself in the foot just as easily with C, just in different ways.
To be clear: I'm not saying the kernel needs C++, I'm not qualified to write on that specifically. But I am saying C++ is not nearly as bad as he makes it out to be.
made it out to be. That post is over 15 years old at this point, which goes to the very point of the posted article - C++ has (subjective opinion here) improved a lot in that time.
No idea what his current opinion on C++ is. Personally I'd rather there was no C++ or Rust in the Linux kernel. IMHO it would be significantly less of a cognitive burden to convert the entire kernel gradually to C++ than Rust.
But I would necessarily hold a man to opinions he held 15 years ago when the landscape has changed so much in that time. Rust was only born the previous year (2006) and not championed by Mozilla until 2009. Yet here we are and there is support in the official kernel for it anyway, whereas C++? Not so much.
Note the year. While I used C++ long before that and certainly didn't agree with him, the C++ Linus took issue with was a lot worse than the C++ of today.
Jeeze. Linus writes like C++ killed his dog or something.
There's plenty of great C++ 'wins' over C that make just doing everyday programming tasks so much easier and simpler for no cost.
You don't need to write so abstract and in the clouds that it becomes impossible to maintain - I certainly don't.
And frankly, you can shoot yourself in the foot just as easily with C, just in different ways.
To be clear: I'm not saying the kernel needs C++, I'm not qualified to write on that specifically. But I am saying C++ is not nearly as bad as he makes it out to be.