C++ and the STL 12 Years Later: What Do You Think Now?

profBill (98315) writes "Way back in 2002, Slashdot ran a story asking what people thought about C++ and the STL. Well, it's 2014 and C++11 is well out there with C++14 on its way.

I teach a second programming course in C++ with a heavy emphasis on the STL (containers and generic algorithms). I just wondered what people think about the situation today. Personally, I think C++11 has cleaned up a lot of problems, making it easier to use, but given all those who work with C++ for a living, I wondered what they thought today compared to then. Are people using C++11? Does it matter at all? I'd love to share the responses with my students! They are always curious about what practitioners are doing these days."

Comments

Feels Dated

[Anonymous Coward]

This will probably come off as a troll, but it's really not intended to be. And keep in mind this is just my experience in my domain with the type of projects I've worked with. There's lots of different domains/projects sets where this wouldn't apply.

I used to love c++ and berade people who used wimp languages like Java. These days I mainly use java, and when I do have to use c++, it feels painfully dated.

At to C++11, while it added some useful stuff, in general it feels like it's just flailing while trying to bring in some of the language features of newer/more modern languages. The new concurrency stuff in particular is just plain unseemly.

Also, a relatively minor but annoying and long-standing problem with doing anything non-trivial in c++ is the lack of consistency between 3rd party libraries. Java has spoiled me into expecting everything to adhere to one convention, but with a c++ project as soon as you've got more than a few external libraries, you end up with a huge mess of code that doesn't mix properly, and writing adapters for everything to get that consistency is just insane.

Long rant short: I'm finding myself using c++ now mainly for:
- small bits of functionality to be used via JNI
- small stuff mainly focused around one library/task (Qt, pqxx, whatever)

Doing anything large and complex with c++ these days just doesn't appeal to me any more. I can build it much faster with java, it'll be more maintainable, and performance wise it's fine for what I do.

Also: floating bottom popup ads.. really dice? You just fell off one mans adblock whitelist.

Re:Feels Dated

[Vanders]

I'm one of these irritating DevOps types.

The Dev side of me loves Ruby. It's a nice language, it's powerful, the standard library is nicely complete and there are Gems for pretty much everything I could ever need.

The Ops side of me hates Ruby. Managing all those Gems on any given server is just horrible, rbenv & rvm need to die in a fire, there are a apparently one hundred different ways to run an application and proxy requests to it, and of courses Gems exist outside of the system package manager and that's always bad.

Re:Keeps getting better.

[Anrego]

I'll agree with C++11 in particular added a lot of stuff that I've been whining about for a long time. It's certainly moved forward and not backwards, and as you said, has managed not to rustle too many jimmies along the way.

That said, with improvements in hardware and languages like Java becoming way more practical, I just find it hard to justify using c++ for anything that doesn't absolutely need to be in c++, and JNI has made "so just write that one part in c++" a common option as well.

Not saying the useful space for c++ is gone, just that it's shrinking, and in the area I work, it's practically gone.

Not just dated...

[davecb]

I've used it off and on since "c with classes", and while it's regularly improved at the detail level, it's still
- non-orthogonal
- complex
- exceedingly subtle in spots.

I think the best characterization is still Ozan's:

Everyone knows 40% of C++. Unfortunately, it's never the same 40%.

STL issues...

[wiredog]

From Page 3 of this:

The C++ STL, with its dyslexia-inducing syntax blizzard of colons and angle brackets, guarantees that if you try to declare any reasonable data structure, your first seven attempts will result
in compiler errors of Wagnerian fierceness:

Syntax error: unmatched thing in thing from std::nonstd::_ _map<_Cyrillic, _$$$dollars>const basic_string< epic_mystery,mongoose_traits < char>, _ _default_alloc_<casual_Fridays = maybe>>