alt Hacker News> the mess in C++ is way worse
What is mess in C++? Yes, it has some shady parts and is more complex than C, but this complexity provides expressiveness and type safety. And you can always use only features from C++ you find useful.
> also contribute to projects that introduce C++ into a C code base, and I really wish they hadn't done this.
What is problematic in these projects other than unfamiliarity of C++ for developers previously used only C?
Replies
> And you can always use only features from C++ you find useful.
Ah, the old "programmers just need to be more disciplined when using C++".
Yeah, C programmers have never seen that argument before...
My macro-vector types are type safe. In fact this is the point.
I do not think C++ is more expressive or type safe.
> What is mess in C++?
Just a couple examples:
How do you make a shallow copy of an object in C++, how do you do the same thing in C? Knowing I can just memcpy _any_ struct in C and have a valid shallow copy is pretty huge.
How do you create a stable ABI in C++? How do you make one in C? In C, knowing that all my exported functions will mostly just work and be stable as long as I don’t change the interface is also huge and allows you to create cross language bindings pretty trivially.