alt Hacker NewsI still hope that modules become mature and safe for production code. Initially I coded in C/C++ and this header #include/#ifndef approach seemed OK at that time. But after using other programming languages, this approach started to feel too boilerplate and archaic. No sane programming language should require a duplication in order to export something (for example, the full function and its prototype), you should write something once and easily export.
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I think everyone hopes/hoped for a sane and useful version of modules, one that would provide substantial improvements to compilation speed and make things like packaging libraries and dealing with dependencies a lot more sane.
The version of modules that got standardized is anything but that. It's an incredibly convoluted mess that requires an enormous amount of effort for little benefit.
> No sane programming language should require a duplication in order to export something (for example, the full function and its prototype)
You are spoiled by the explosive growth of open source and the ease of accessing source code. Lots of closed source commercial libraries provide some .h files and a .so file. And even when open source, when you install a library from a package from a distribution or just a tarball, it usually installs some .h files and a .so file.
The separation between interface and implementation into separate files was a good idea. The idea seemed to be going out of vogue but it’s still a good idea.