are these developments making things easier for the developer?
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One of the "improvements" I find really complicated is the range operator.
string name;
name = "My name is Sander Rossel".Substring(11);
name = "My name is Sander Rossel"[11..];Now tell me, which line of code better conveys my purpose? :~ Pattern matching is nice, but should be rarely needed in proper OOP.
Exception ex = new Exception();
switch (ex)
{
case InvalidCastException:
break;
case InvalidOperationException:
break;
case NullReferenceException:
break;
default:
break;
}// The alternative is, of course, an if-else statement.
var exType = ex.GetType();
if (exType == typeof(InvalidCastException))
{ }
else if (exType == typeof(InvalidOperationException))
{ }
else
{ }There's probably an advantage to the pattern matching, but it doesn't do much for readability. I love named tuples though.
public (string firstName, string lastName) GetNameParts(string name) { }
// Usage...
(var firstName, var lastName) = GetNameParts("Sander Rossel");
// Or...
var tuple = GetNameParts("Sander Rossel");
Console.WriteLine(tuple.firstName);And of course string interpolation, which greatly improves readability and decreases change of bugs.
Console.WriteLine($"Hi {firstName} {lastName}, welcome to {appName}!");
// vs.
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Hi {0} {1}, welcome to {2}!", firstName, lastName, appName);If I could keep only one language improvement from about the last ten years it would be string interpolation!
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
Which code better conveys your purpose? The second. Using ranges in Python for the last five million yeasrs, it is a joy to see them in C#. The only thing to remember, as in most languages that use slices and ranges, in [start..end] is that "end" is a stop and is not included in the range.
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!"[1..5]);
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!"[..5]);
Both give us "Hello" rom [0] to [4] stopping at [5].
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A question in the C++ forum today led me to C++ conformance improvements in Visual Studio 2019 | Microsoft Docs[^]. It seems to me that C++ is getting more and more complex and only a select few (some of whom are regulars here) will understand and be able to use these features. So I have to wonder who benefits from them, apart from the compiler writers who will definitely keep their jobs.
I believe code should read like a story. It makes for maintainability which is my primary concern. Very often the C# developers seem to believe that minimum typing is the objective of the language and add things that remove from the story. Choose what your priority is. I hate these stupid new features that hide what the story is saying. It's like a conversation with an idiot. You have no idea what they are saying.
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A question in the C++ forum today led me to C++ conformance improvements in Visual Studio 2019 | Microsoft Docs[^]. It seems to me that C++ is getting more and more complex and only a select few (some of whom are regulars here) will understand and be able to use these features. So I have to wonder who benefits from them, apart from the compiler writers who will definitely keep their jobs.
When you look at a list of C++ changes in isolation, and without any motivating commentary they look hopelessly esoteric and unimportant. My experience with modern C++ features is that one day you will be looking for a way to solve a problem, and suddenly it will hit you, "Ah ha! That's what < feature X> is for." C++ is becoming a very complex language. But the things added to C++ are put there by a bunch of really smart people who are experienced developers. It all has a purpose.
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When you look at a list of C++ changes in isolation, and without any motivating commentary they look hopelessly esoteric and unimportant. My experience with modern C++ features is that one day you will be looking for a way to solve a problem, and suddenly it will hit you, "Ah ha! That's what < feature X> is for." C++ is becoming a very complex language. But the things added to C++ are put there by a bunch of really smart people who are experienced developers. It all has a purpose.
-
A question in the C++ forum today led me to C++ conformance improvements in Visual Studio 2019 | Microsoft Docs[^]. It seems to me that C++ is getting more and more complex and only a select few (some of whom are regulars here) will understand and be able to use these features. So I have to wonder who benefits from them, apart from the compiler writers who will definitely keep their jobs.
I actually haven't learned anything new since C++ 2003 I still look at C++ as C with objects, so for me it hasn't needed updating since it's standardization in the 90's. I never used the dreaded Templates (memory hoggers) but I've heard that they have improved since 2003. So if you're like me that still codes in C++ as if it were C, then it's like "Why fix what ain't broken? There's always assembler"
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Which code better conveys your purpose? The second. Using ranges in Python for the last five million yeasrs, it is a joy to see them in C#. The only thing to remember, as in most languages that use slices and ranges, in [start..end] is that "end" is a stop and is not included in the range.
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!"[1..5]);
Console.WriteLine("Hello World!"[..5]);
Both give us "Hello" rom [0] to [4] stopping at [5].
I think your opinion comes from the "....Using ranges in Python for the last five million years..." If you're used to ranges, then the second version is more obvious. If you're not, it's pretty mysterious.
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Same thing is happening with C#. What was once the one of the cleanest languages is accruing debris.
cheers Chris Maunder
You beat me to it chris, I was just about to say exactly the same thing. Myself and a colleague, where talking about this the other day, and basically came to the conclusion that all languages now have to take this approach, simply to appease the 15 minute attention span of the instant feedback generation.
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One of the "improvements" I find really complicated is the range operator.
string name;
name = "My name is Sander Rossel".Substring(11);
name = "My name is Sander Rossel"[11..];Now tell me, which line of code better conveys my purpose? :~ Pattern matching is nice, but should be rarely needed in proper OOP.
Exception ex = new Exception();
switch (ex)
{
case InvalidCastException:
break;
case InvalidOperationException:
break;
case NullReferenceException:
break;
default:
break;
}// The alternative is, of course, an if-else statement.
var exType = ex.GetType();
if (exType == typeof(InvalidCastException))
{ }
else if (exType == typeof(InvalidOperationException))
{ }
else
{ }There's probably an advantage to the pattern matching, but it doesn't do much for readability. I love named tuples though.
public (string firstName, string lastName) GetNameParts(string name) { }
// Usage...
(var firstName, var lastName) = GetNameParts("Sander Rossel");
// Or...
var tuple = GetNameParts("Sander Rossel");
Console.WriteLine(tuple.firstName);And of course string interpolation, which greatly improves readability and decreases change of bugs.
Console.WriteLine($"Hi {firstName} {lastName}, welcome to {appName}!");
// vs.
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Hi {0} {1}, welcome to {2}!", firstName, lastName, appName);If I could keep only one language improvement from about the last ten years it would be string interpolation!
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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Yes, it will keep on trucking for a long time. I have seen way too many attempts at using C++ for embedded applications that only use a subset of what C++ can do. And when you objectively ( pun indented ) it just makes you wonder what the point was of using C++ instead of C. Managers of any kind are a very bad idea to begin with.
Hm, as an embedded system designer/programmer (now retired), I used C++ for most of my programing in the last 15 years of my career. Using templates for things like FIFOs, queues, digital oscillators, filter parts, etc made my code cleaner and easier to write. I did stay away from dynamic object creation/destruction and I didn't use C++ exceptions.
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Named tuples and interpolated strings are awesome, as is the ?? operator and the ?. operator. Those stay.
cheers Chris Maunder
I've been using ? and ?? so much I don't even consider them new anymore! So completely agreed :laugh:
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
-
A question in the C++ forum today led me to C++ conformance improvements in Visual Studio 2019 | Microsoft Docs[^]. It seems to me that C++ is getting more and more complex and only a select few (some of whom are regulars here) will understand and be able to use these features. So I have to wonder who benefits from them, apart from the compiler writers who will definitely keep their jobs.
i always believed that a large part of it was about "keeping their jobs". i'm not talking only about VS2019 or C++. Windows grows because of it and you see the same buttons with the same functionality changing places in the same Form of say, System Properties. then the UP one directory button disappears in Vista and 7, but then it's coming back in 8. they move the GUI to a heavily 3D multicolored look and then back to 8 colors and win3.11 looks. it's progress alright, but i don't know if it's in the right direction. the chances to start a C++ project that lasts for 5 years and at the end of the project to claim you know modern C++ are getting close to zero, much less to claim you know some other rapidly evolving language. "if this frameworks are so great and helpful why do we need another one? why didn't the last 27 frameworks solve the problem? they didn't so you need the 28th framework, right?" - Jonathan Blow
