Compiler do boring work for you? Don't make me laugh. [LWN.net]

Compiler do boring work for you? Don't make me laugh.

Posted Nov 15, 2008 12:27 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Argh. How is this relevant? by nix
Parent article: Things that go Clang in the night: LLVM 2.4 released (ars technica)

Have you actually written something with template metaprogramming? That's constant parade of repetetion, bunch of tricks and unclear semantic. Compiler does not do the boring work for you. It tries to strangle you at every step. The fact is: C++ is not powerful enough to make a lot of stuff easy and it's too far removed from the hardware to use it as "high- level portable assembler". Neither fish nor meat as was said above.

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Compiler do boring work for you? Don't make me laugh.

Posted Nov 16, 2008 15:16 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

The 'compiler doing the boring work for you' was a reference to RAII,
obviously. 'Going out of scope firing destructors' being an example of the
compiler doing the boring work for you.

I have no idea why you dislike it: all you've given so far has been
venting.

Compiler do boring work for you? Don't make me laugh.

Posted Nov 16, 2008 19:44 UTC (Sun) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link] (1 responses)

One can use C++ as "C plus extra type checking". Or one can use one or several or all of the C++ features such as virtuals, templates, and exceptions. C++ is great for abstract programs.

But C++ can be a royal pain when it comes to doing real work. Ever tried to open a pipe and handle it through C++ iostreams? Pipes are not available in Windoze so C++ refuses to admit they exist. You're stuck with compiler-specific extensions that change every other release, hidden in a namespace with three underscores.

C++'s operating system support transcends file cabinets in locked basement cupboards guarded by leopards and landmines.

Compiler do boring work for you? Don't make me laugh.

Posted Nov 16, 2008 22:11 UTC (Sun) by avik (guest, #704) [Link]

C doesn't recognize pipes either. You can't access a pipe using FILE *s using Standard C.

(fdopen() is not Standard C)