this post has been making the rounds on Mastodon, for good reason. it’s nominally a post about the governance and community around C++, but (without spoiling too much) it’s written as a journey packed with cathartic sneers at a number of topics and people we’ve covered here before. as a quick preview, tell me this isn’t relatable:
This is not a feel good post, and to even call it a rant would be dismissive of the absolute unending fury I am currently living through as 8+ years of absolute fucking horseshit in the C++ space comes to fruition, and if I don’t write this all as one entire post, I’m going to physically fucking explode.
fucking masterful
an important moderator note for anyone who comes here looking to tone police in the spirit of the Tech Industry Blog Social Compact: lol
I had no idea so much of C++ and the Committee was so closely linked to the military industrial complex. Like people who design fucking murder drones just casually send their requests to them and they read them and care? And Bjarne Cplusplus, the inventor of C++, helped Lockheed Martin on the F22???
No, seriously, sorry, I cannot put myself into a hypothetical headspace where someone sending me a letter “hello, we need this feature to kill civillians better, thanks” isn’t interpreted as a prank, since if it weren’t then the only acceptable response would be to return a pipebomb to the sender.
ackshully F22 is not a civilian killing weapon, americans are very cagey about it, foreign sales are forbidden, can’t operate from aircraft carrier, has been only flown and maintained by americans. its final task would be air defense of north american airspace in ww3 scenario. the civilian killing machines would be drones like MQ9 and since we’re talking about turkey, bayraktars. that, and older multirole jets like F16 and helicopters and whatever ground attack aircraft they have. turns out things are much simpler if you’re just slinging PGMs from above, or outside MANPADS range, against people that can’t fight back otherwise. these things would be useless in normal war
i guess lots of code in f22 goes into radar, some other sensors (ir for example) and comms (link 16, communication to missiles etc), a place where i suspect c is a good choice
the F22 is the C++ of military planes and I mean that in the most derogatory way possible
y tho
it outperforms f35 in few ways, and in ways it doesn’t a couple of f35 improvements can be grafted onto it. both carry the same weapons. it’s to f35 what is f15 to f16. still it’s apex predator in air to air combat, which is precisely what it was made for
it’s also no longer made, more expensive than f35 (partially because only qurter of planned number was made) probably a bitch to maintain (tradeoff in f35 is probably maintainability for a degree of stealthiness), and runs on i960 because the last ones were built like 15 years ago
Of course, this brings up the title of this section. The C++ Alliance. Shortly after making a shitload of money from the massive rise of value in bitcoin in the late 10s, Vinnie Falco proceeded to purchase the C++ Slack under the name of this non-profit organization.
Wait a second, record scratch, stop, what on earth does “purchase the C++ Slack” mean? Since when are we trading Slacks? What’s the value of a Slack? Can I buy someone’s Slack? How many users do I have to get on my Slack before it’s worth something on the open market? What the fuck does this mean???
I am about halfway through but it’d really help if someone could maybe do a TL;DR about the C++ features that are mentioned in this post.
Like what the fuck are profiles? Modules? C++ has modules? Half of my current job is in C++ and I have no idea what any of those things are. Which seems to be a common problem with C++, e.g. I’ve recently learnt that something for garbage collection used to exist, but it was scrapped and removed from the standard before I’ve first heard of it.
It’s hard to understand the reddit comments linked without this context and the post itself is like an hour-long read.
EDIT: Okay I see profiles are explained in a section later, but modules are not? Also they’re explained in opposition to “contracts” which I’ve also never heard of and jesus fucking christ, this language is a hellhole
EDIT2:
I’ll add operator . to the list of plot important characters that get no introduction if you’re not familiar with the C++ Extended Universe
Oh, is this something about memory safety and how people twist themselves into pretzels trying to justify using C++
opens article
Unfortunately, this post has mentions of rape and sexual assault.
Oh for fuck’s sake, why is it always this
I know next to nothing about C++ but I do know that I heard that closing line in the original voice and got goosebumps.