Ask HN: Do you still enjoy coding in C++?

mort96

I enjoy writing C++ code. I acknowledge that C++ is a bad language in a lot of ways, but it's a bad language which I know really well, and it fits with how I think about code. And it lets me effortlessly do "clever" things with how memory is managed to avoid unnecessary allocations etc. I've already learned most of its idiosyncrasies, handling rvalue references/move semantics, how to go about implementing contracts like iterators and containers, etc. I also like writing Rust, and I like how Rust makes sure I don't make mistakes. I think Rust is a better language in many ways and I think it's the future of low-level programming (and I think it's wild that it took so many decades to get a proper competitor to C++!). But I also like how C++ doesn't care and lets me do whatever I want without acting as a nanny. I would never ever dare to write a publicly exposed web server in C++, but a game? Sure!

arya0

idk but my claude seems to really enjoys writing code in C++

adev_

In one word: Power. C++ is by far the most powerful language around. And this is for the best and (often) also the worst. In term of generic programming, control on hardware, capacity of abstraction and more generally expressivity: Nothing, even today, come even close to C++. It is a language full of foot guns and it has its fair share of legacy problems. But if you learn to avoid it (throught experience and pain). You can reach a productivity and a level of performance in C++ which is very difficult to beat with anything else, including Rust. Ironically, I find it particularly true in the age of A.I. Because the amount of C++ around is so tremendous, that agents are currently pretty good at it if guided properly.

egorfine

There is C++ and then there is C++. Totally different things. One I enjoy programming. Another I dread.

logicchains

I like writing in C++ because Claude does most of the work and if I structure the source well it compiles much faster than my Rust code.

ketzu

I really enjoyed writing C++. At least the C++ with for loops, calling functions and the sort. Not so much the c++ of template specifications. I recently saw [1] and the point of C++ building new things with the template mechanics really resonated with me. Features built that way stopped me from using the part of C++ I really liked. However, I stopped writing C++ once I switched to Rust. I assume I would still enjoy writing C++, as long as I can avoid a lot of the templating features. (I might have a different opinion if I worked on different kinds of C++ projects, eg more people, more library oriented, etc.) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZTkT1Cq_aY

pjmlp

Yes, on side projects where I get to use concepts or modules, or even ranges. Languages like C++, Scala, Haskell, is where I get the most fun coding, unfortunately the question can be reformulated as "Do you still enjoy coding?" , as we get pushed to program into natural languages instead.

staszewski

What is coding?

pjc50

I'd like to put in a "no" after spending many years writing C++; my day job is in C# now. The templating system is more powerful than any other language I have significant experience with, but that also lets people write incomprehensible systems. And the compile times always have been really long.

throwaway81523

Yes I mostly enjoy it, but I don't do anything critical with it and I'm nowhere near expert level. I use the subset of it that makes sense to me. If I were doing something critical I'd want to use Ada, which I've played around with a little bit. I think the lurking question is about Rust. I've read a book about it and it has some attractions but also what I think are some poor decisions. I suppose I'll have to use it for something sometime. C++ is sort of like Perl, it seems to me. A lot of what seems like bloat is actually affordances, so the thing you want is often surprisingly close at hand. Some things of course are awful. I wouldn't call C++ a good language but it does most of the things. Enjoyment doesn't always mean productivity anyway. I enjoy using Forth but that's almost like enjoying riding a unicycle. I wouldn't do anything substantial with Forth except for recreation. I do feel fairly productive in C++.

coderenegade

Modern dialects of C++, sure. There's a nice language in there, it just comes with everything else and the kitchen sink. The most horrific code I've ever had the misfortune of working on was also C++.

cjfd

I like coding in C++ a lot. I think it is great that it can both be a high level language an a low level one. One has control of the bits if one wants that but there are also a lot of goodies to make things happen automatically. I think RAII is the greatest invention in programming ever.

adg001

I never enjoyed programming in C++. I feel its (original) syntax and approach to OOP to be obnoxious. I never looked into C++11, though; I hope things improved. The first love was always for C; notwithstanding all its shortcomings, I feel at home writing C, and I would still enjoy doing so.

chris_j

I'm really torn about C++. I love C++ but there are things that I really don't like about it as well. It's a fantastic language in a lot of ways, but it carries around 40+ years of cruft, of things that you wouldn't do like that if you were inventing a programming language today. I haven't written C++ professionally for many years at this point, and my memories of using it professionally (pre C++ 11) are not happy ones: having to agree on a strict subset of the language that we were allowed to use, which avoided features that any of the compilers didn't support well, or that my teammates didn't like. Sadly back then the list of forbidden features included templates and namespaces. But using C++ on personal projects nowadays, and being able to choose which bits of the language to use - and which to avoid - is much more enjoyable. And honestly, the language did get a lot better from C++ 11 onwards.

globalnode

yep, i actually liked stl, iterators with auto also seem like a godsend now compared to how verbose they used to be. the biggest pain point for me was keeping track of all the required ctors and operator overloading. admittedly i used it back when all pointers were just *, once i discovered a single line of python could do what it took 10-100 lines of C++ to achieve i switched. so its been a looooong time since i programmed in C++, but i did like it overall.

amelius

I stopped using C++ around the time when Boost libraries were a thing. It was fun to think a bit of how to do metaprogramming, but it quickly became apparent that this was not the right way to do things.

gignico

I love C++, in the C++11 days I even organized a local C++ User Group at my university, and I've used it for the last 20 years as my main language. I still appreciate its many merits but since a bit more than a year I migrated to Rust and I find it very difficult to look back, except for maintaining my previous C++ projects. Surprisingly, it's not Rust's memory safety features that I miss the most when turning back to C++. It's mostly the absence of algebraic data types and pattern matching, and the split between compile-time and runtime polymorphism, i.e. concepts vs virtual classes, where in Rust you just have traits and use them for everything. On top of that the tooling and the ecosystem are just amazing. There's a proposal for pattern matching sitting there under the committee's desk for some years now. With the mess that the standard committee is going through I really doubt they will be able to ship pattern matching for C++29 or even later. Too little too late. So to answer the question, yes, I still appreciate the merits of C++ but I don't enjoy writing it as much as I have in the past.

mococa

Yes. It was my first language (which I started to produce something useful, got jobs, etc...) - and it will be my last.

mark_l_watson

I had a love-hate relationship with C++. In the decade prior to the release of the first version of C++ my company bought me a Lisp Machine, and programming was so much fun. C++ was gnarly, and I put a lot of effort into making C++ easier for our new hires out of college to use (I wrote a C++ GUI library for them to use that evolved into my personal code for my two “Portable C++ GUI” books for McGraw-Hill). I ended up writing 5 C++ books, and using the language was fantastic for my career, but: I never really liked C++

taspeotis

I enjoy using C++ as “C with classes.”