<story><title>Why C++ Sails When the Vasa Sank [pdf]</title><url>http://files.meetup.com/1455470/Why%20C%2B%2B%20Sails%20When%20the%20Vasa%20Sank.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AnimalMuppet</author><text>To me, the key line was &amp;quot;Most of the complexity of C++ is hidden from most of the users most of the time.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The complexity is there.  Trying to understand the whole language at a language-lawyer level is mind-boggling.  Trying to write libraries that make proper use of the goodies is very hard.&lt;p&gt;But using C++ isn&amp;#x27;t so bad, as long as you don&amp;#x27;t try to use every aspect of it.  Just use the parts you need to be able to do what you&amp;#x27;re really trying to do.  You don&amp;#x27;t have to pay for what you don&amp;#x27;t use.  That&amp;#x27;s good enough for a huge number of programmers in a wide variety of contexts.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a lot of haters that can point out a huge number of flaws.  But here&amp;#x27;s the thing:  Most of them, I never run into.  I don&amp;#x27;t care if the move syntax is confusing; I don&amp;#x27;t use it.  Maybe I never will.  If I have to, &lt;i&gt;then&lt;/i&gt; I&amp;#x27;ll care about how good or bad the syntax is.  In the meantime, the parts I actually use let me get my work done better than any alternatives.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rayiner</author><text>&amp;gt; The complexity is there. Trying to understand the whole language at a language-lawyer level is mind-boggling.&lt;p&gt;It makes me uncomfortable not to have that level of understanding for a language that&amp;#x27;s so low-level and doesn&amp;#x27;t have the &amp;quot;Do What I Mean&amp;quot; bent of say Python. I&amp;#x27;m &amp;quot;meh&amp;quot; on C++ going forward. I invested a lot of time into my copy of &amp;quot;The C++ Programming Language&amp;quot; (3d Ed.), for C++ 98, but I can&amp;#x27;t motivate myself to get the new edition and learn in the ins-and-outs of C++ 11. It doesn&amp;#x27;t seem worth it to me. I&amp;#x27;m really hoping Rust catches on. It&amp;#x27;s a complex language in the same vein as C++, but the bang-for-buck in terms of expressiveness relative to complexity is better, I think.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why C++ Sails When the Vasa Sank [pdf]</title><url>http://files.meetup.com/1455470/Why%20C%2B%2B%20Sails%20When%20the%20Vasa%20Sank.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>AnimalMuppet</author><text>To me, the key line was &amp;quot;Most of the complexity of C++ is hidden from most of the users most of the time.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The complexity is there.  Trying to understand the whole language at a language-lawyer level is mind-boggling.  Trying to write libraries that make proper use of the goodies is very hard.&lt;p&gt;But using C++ isn&amp;#x27;t so bad, as long as you don&amp;#x27;t try to use every aspect of it.  Just use the parts you need to be able to do what you&amp;#x27;re really trying to do.  You don&amp;#x27;t have to pay for what you don&amp;#x27;t use.  That&amp;#x27;s good enough for a huge number of programmers in a wide variety of contexts.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a lot of haters that can point out a huge number of flaws.  But here&amp;#x27;s the thing:  Most of them, I never run into.  I don&amp;#x27;t care if the move syntax is confusing; I don&amp;#x27;t use it.  Maybe I never will.  If I have to, &lt;i&gt;then&lt;/i&gt; I&amp;#x27;ll care about how good or bad the syntax is.  In the meantime, the parts I actually use let me get my work done better than any alternatives.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ef4</author><text>One does not always have the luxury of sticking to the good parts. Code is communication, and you often have no control over who is trying to communicate with you.</text></comment>