Celebrating 30th Anniversary of the First C++ Compiler: Let's Find Bugs In It

New submitter Andrey_Karpov writes: Cfront is a C++ compiler which came into existence in 1983 and was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup ("30 YEARS OF C++"). At that time it was known as "C with Classes". Cfront had a complete parser, symbol tables, and built a tree for each class, function, etc. Cfront was based on CPre. Cfront defined the language until circa 1990. Many of the obscure corner cases in C++ are related to the Cfront implementation limitations. The reason is that Cfront performed translation from C++ to C. In short, Cfront is a sacred artifact for a C++ programmer. So I just couldn't help checking such a project [for bugs].

Comments

Re:C++ is...

[Dutch Gun]

Nope, C++ is still a thing when you need to create really large, complex programs, and when efficiency still really matters. Here in the videogame industry, C++ absolutely reigns supreme. Nothing else even comes close. Large applications like MS Office are still written in C++, from what I'm told, as are *many* large applications. It's not just legacy stuff either.

C++ has the native performance of C, but is able to use powerful zero-cost abstractions that allow programs to scale up safely. For instance, if you write modern C++, it's almost impossible to write code that will stomp on random memory or leak resources, a real issue with C or older style C++ programs, yet that protection is completely optimized away and costs *nothing* at run-time (which I think is something many programmers don't properly appreciate).

An easy language to master? Absolutely not. It's a language that takes a long time to learn well, and it can be rather unforgiving at times, but it's great for what it does. C++ 11/14 has also really breathed new life into things as well, IMO. It's really amazing how much the language feels almost like it's using managed memory (e.g. garbage collection) now that I'm using smart pointers ubiquitously.

C++ is incredibly portable as well. My game engine works across several platforms, only a smallish percentage of the code is different between platforms, mostly for low-level graphics, audio, windowing, or other system calls.

It's stability as a language is legendary as well, and that's important for real-world projects that depend on it. You can probably still compile most the earliest C++ code on a modern compiler and expect it to still work, not to mention most C code as well.

I'd never claim C++ is the end-all, be-all of languages (I sound like I'm gushing, but I have plenty of complaints as well), but it most assuredly has a very long future with us, and for some very good reasons.