Re: [Nmh-workers] C++

[Michael Richardson]

Paul Vixie <address@hidden> wrote:
    > as promised, i asked bert hubert how he uses C++ in PowerDNS without 
damaging
    > himself:

    > On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 12:43:16PM -0800, Paul Vixie wrote:
    >> you seem to have made peace with C++. i predict that you did this by
    >> declaring some subset of its features that you'd be willing to use, and
    >> forbidding all others. if so, can you tell me what the subset is, and
    >> how if at all you enforce it in your code base?

    > he wrote back as follows, and also gave permission to be quoted here:

    > bert hubert wrote:
    >> You guess right! I think this might make a good blog post in fact. 
Various
    >> Linux kernel developers have read PowerDNS source code and most commented
    >> this was the first bit of C++ they truly understood and could appreciate.
    >>
    >> The GCC compiler people have also decided to use C++, which is also
    >> something of a vote of confidence from some pretty discerning folks.
    >>
    >> So in short, my guidelines consist of first reading the four thin books 
by
    >> Scott Meyer: Effective C++, More Effective C++, Effective STL, Effective
    >> Modern C++.
    >>
    >> Especially the first book covers a lot of the "you can do tons of things 
in
    >> C++, but please don't".
    >>
    >> Things to not use or do (unless you have very good reason):

Thanks for posting this, I shall save it.

My impression is that the Rust guys started with the same list :-)

I believe that Rust will replace C and will perhaps wind up in places like
Contiki.  It may find itself being used as a system implementation language
(i.e. as the core for ruby, perl, python).

I believe that GO will replace C++, Java and Python in many "system admin" and
bigger systems like GNOME and the like.  C# has already replaced on windows
for UI stuff, and GO might make inroads among developers that didn't like C#.
GO is clearly optimized by google for google-scale things.

I can't imagine implementing /bin/ls in GO.  /bin/bash in GO? sure.
I'm yet sure I can imagine implementing /bin/ls in Rust.

I'm highly pissed at the universe that all of them
(GO,Rust,Python,Perl,Ruby,Java) each have their own package system.
It seems that much of this has been driven by the lack of a useful packaging
system on Windows.  While the OSX vs BSD vs RedHat vs Debian* level of (system)
packaging is another annoyance, I can mostly live with that.

    >> Things to actually do:
    >>
    >> * Trust the compiler writer, use C++ to do heavy lifting

+1

--
]               Never tell me the odds!                 | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works        | network architect  [
]     address@hidden  http://www.sandelman.ca/        |   ruby on rails    [

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