White House: Future Software Should Be Memory Safe - eviltoast

On the one side I really like c and c++ because they’re fun and have great performance; they don’t feel like your fighting the language and let me feel sort of creative in the way I do things(compared with something like Rust or Swift).

On the other hand, when weighing one’s feelings against the common good, I guess it’s not really a contest. Plus I suspect a lot of my annoyance with languages like rust stems from not being as familiar with the paradigm. What do you all think?

  • crittecol@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I’m learning c++ via exercism because I’d like to use it for game development and other high performance use cases, and because it’s a good pip for the resume.

    In fact, I mostly did this because so many job listings mention it, haven’t even come up with a high-scale game dev problem to solve.

    I’ll probably continue because I find it interesting and no amount of practice is bad, but my question is how is everyone letting this affect their outlook on c++ in their career vs side projects, etc. Really, I’m having a hard time imagining why it was important for this to be said in this way instead of just changing internal policies and job listings.

    • arendjr@programming.dev
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      8 months ago

      I’m learning c++ via exercism because I’d like to use it for game development and other high performance use cases, and because it’s a good pip for the resume.

      I think for game development you don’t need to worry about a shortage of C++ opportunities any time soon. Both Unreal and Godot are built in C++ as well as many in-house engines. Similarly, there are other niches where C++ is king and it would decades for that to change.

      That said, there are certainly areas where C++ is already being replaced by Rust. Areas where both performance and security are important are the first movers, such as webbrowsers, operating system components, but also things like high-frequency traders (crypto ones almost exclusively use Rust, while traditional ones will move slower).

      Personally, I also used to be heavily invested in C++, but I’m happy to have moved to Rust myself. I recently became an independent contractor, and while I would be happy to take contracts involving C++ to migrate them to Rust, I would certainly not start new projects in C++ anymore. But for you, I wouldn’t worry about that yet. The experience you gain working with C++ will help you appreciate Rust more down the line. Just keep in mind that at some point you will be likely to be exposed to Rust too.