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Comment by jclay

I really don't get all the hate that C++ gets. The suggested alternatives in the article are Rust and Swift. What if you need to develop a cross platform GUI, that has a backend running a CUDA or OpenCL algorithm? For the former, you can use Qt, which isn't without it's warts, but is pretty tried and true in my experience (see KDE, VTK, etc). For the latter, you'll end up writing your CUDA code in C++ anyways. I guess you could go the route of writing bindings, but that is not without additional effort. Not that it won't happen for Rust, but C++ also has tooling suited for enterprise use that are largely unmatched in other languages (Visual Studio, Qt, etc). Sandboxing, static analysis, and fuzzing tools are also mostly built for C/C++ codebases. It's also an ISO standard language which makes it both a language full of warts due to decision by committee, but also a candidate for a stable, long-lasting language that will outlive many of us. (Try finding an ISO Standard Language you don't hate).

Either way, C++ is certainly not for every project, but the articles scattered around the web claiming it should be superseded by Rust are plentiful. These opinion pieces make no attempt to credit C++ for when it does make sense to use. Despite it's quirks, it is still the most optimal way to program HPC applications or cross platform GUIs that are not Electron based. The security tools around it and the fact that it's an ISO standard language make it a solid choice for many enterprises.

parent jclay 7 years ago

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