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by jstimpfle 15 days ago
Actually care to open GCC and see what I mean? Check the newest commits and see what they do. Maybe you're living in a dream world where some magic language features do the work for you. Meanwhile people out in the field do actual work by just pushing bytes at the low level.
1 comments
pjmlp 15 days ago
To use the developers own words,

> Necessary to bootstrap GCC. GCC 5.4 or newer has sufficient support for used C++14 features.

> Versions of GCC prior to 15 allow bootstrapping with an ISO C++11 compiler, versions prior to 10.5 allow bootstrapping with an ISO C++98 compiler, and versions prior to 4.8 allow bootstrapping with an ISO C89 compiler.

> If you need to build an intermediate version of GCC in order to bootstrap current GCC, consider GCC 9.5: it can build the current D compiler, and was also the version that declared C++17 support stable.

https://gcc.gnu.org/install/prerequisites.html

So yeah, if you want to enjoy GCC 4.8...

Now I can bother to show exactly each source file, but Github search is relatively easy to use on the mirror source code.

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jstimpfle 15 days ago
Why are you unable to get my point? I understand that GCC doesn't compile with plain C compiler anymore. A lot of my own code doesn't!

I'm saying that most of features like templates, constexpr, reflection etc. don't scale well to serious use, as a broad statement. I fully acknowledge this is not a black and white situation. But I encourage you to look at actual pedestrian code, it's mostly not abstracted fluffy magic template code at all. It's pushing individual bytes with totally basic means (mostly C code). Why? Because code using these fluffy features is terribly hard to maintain. Templates lock you in their own language world with incredibly bad syntax and bad ergonomics, in short: it's a pain!

Personally I think even C++ classes (i.e. 1980's C++) are unusable because they bifurcate syntax/semantics needlessly and add implicit invisible scope. But I acknowledge it's somewhat possible to program with classes, and some people like to lean on RAII heavily. I mostly do not like to use RAII, and I've tried many times, I think it sucks for non-toy programming, even though obviously the idea is intuitive.

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pjmlp 15 days ago
Because I am having this conversation with C folks since comp.lang.c and com.lang.c.moderated days.

C++ was perfectly usable already within the constraints of DR/MS-DOS 5.0 powered PC hardware with Borland compilers, instead of plain old C.

Fluffy features power the AI revolution infrastructure.

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jstimpfle 15 days ago
Congratulations, empty marketing speech, not reacting to what I say.
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