A person I watch frequently gave me this gem. Please forgive the annoying thumbnail.
I’ve seen this sentiment in a few places recently, and as a software engineer with 20 years of experience I can say with 100% certainty that this is a terrible (and dangerous) trend when it comes to programming.
Undergrads should absolutely be learning how memory works, how to allocate it, when to free it, and what issues you can get into when you don’t do it properly. Sheltering them from such things will lead to a more ignorant generation of developers, which will lead to a lot of headaches down the road, for everyone.
The programming field is going through what math has been going through for ages. Many people don’t want to learn how things work because they can use a calculator or software to do basic maths. But then when it comes to actually understanding what’s going on, there becomes a big loss.
Manual memory management has about as much applicability these days as assembler did back when I was doing my degree. It should be covered as part of learning How Things Work Under the Hood, it’s still needed for some kinds of specialist work, but many—perhaps even the majority of—people writing code will never need to deal with it in the real world, because the languages in which most code is written these days all have some form of memory management.
There is still an enormous amount of C++ code still in use (and other unsafe languages for that matter). It is still an actively developed and used language, and likely will be for many years to come. Having at least a basic grounding in it is very valuable element of flexibility for any potential programmer, as well as an understanding of the underlying concepts.
Yes, there is C++ code still being written, and it’s a reasonable choice for some lower-level and complex code , but it’s a much smaller percentage of the whole than it was even ten years ago. Web stack stuff tends to be written in memory-managed languages, and it probably accounts for more lines of new code than anything else these days (note that I didn’t specify good code). You can have a whole career without ever getting down into the weeds.
Similarly, assembler still had some practical applications in games and video codecs when I got out of school. These days, I wouldn’t expect to see hand-written assembler outside of an OS kernel or other specialized low-level use. It’s still not gone, but it’s been gradually going for many years now. Languages without memory management likely never will completely disappear, and they have massive inertia because of the sheer number of C utility libraries lying around, but they’re gradually becoming more marginalized.
What it comes down to is: understanding how memory works is useful and broadening for someone who wants to program, but it’s no longer necessary even for a professional. (I think we’re mostly in agreement on everything except relative importance, in other words.)
Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you should allocate a billion arrays just because the memory is managed for you. It’s still inefficient.
Hmmm.
You’re probably right. But to any student reading this I’d say you’re likely to become a significantly stronger programmer, and thus find it easier to find employment, if you understand and feel comfortable knowing how to use a memory-unsafe language. Eventually you’ll arrive up in a problem that’s caused by it, or a required optimisation that benefits from manual memory management. If you want to work in games, too, there really is no other option.
In that sense it’s the same as assembler. One day you’ll sit there and not understand why something breaks only to realise that the underlying assembler doesn’t quite do what the source alludes to.
So, I’m not sure you need it, but I’m pretty sure you’ll benefit from it.
18++
At least Tom won’t be affected. He’s a genius.
For those in the unknown, this comment is in reference to an article on The Daily WTF, which ThePrimeagen “reacted” to.
rant
As I have frequently found myself not knowing a quip/quote/reference from popular (or worse, obscure) media, I am doing my bit to add context to this rather plain comment disguised as an in-joke.
For people who derive pleasure from posting such references, please annotate your reference with some context for others to take part in/appreciate the media you liked enough to remember and make a reference of.
I like theprimeagen and I’m really interested in what he has to say. but he talks so loud into the microphone and it just ends up giving me anxiety :(
There was this one youtube video he made and the moment it started, he screamed into the microphone and it just instantly freaked me the fuck out. 😔
Let me guess - learned from all those websites about unsafe memory(ies)?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/watch?v=r2npdV6tX1g
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
