Pitch me on C++

I will list the benefits of modern C++ because old C++ kinda sucks

• It is very fast
• It is extremely powerful and supports things like templates,compile and runtime time polymorphism,macros and much more
• Easy interoperability with existing C libs
• With things like shared_ptr and unique_ptr you no longer have to manually manage your memory
• Supports both high level and low level devolopment

There are many more but these are my favorites

Oh, well... May I change the question?

It is at least 20 years since last time I coded in C++. Maybe something changed; nevertheless, let me summarize my memories about it in two short phrases

• C++: an OOP giant with clay feet inherited from C
• C++: the power, the simplicity, the elegance and the safety of an hand grenade without pin.

I still remember the somersault with twist that I had to do to define a friend function of a template class...

It has been a long time, but some of the things that I remembered that I did not like

• C-style #include that physically (rather than logically) embeds the included file. This has as consequences
  • You must use the ugly #ifdef INCLUDED hack.
  • If you use a use namespace in an header file, you pollute the namespace of whoever includes you
• Template syntax too compact and obscure. Friends of class templates.
• Automatic template expansion. At the time it looked like something cool, but with time I grew suspicious of compilers that try to be too smart. I prefer to write one line more to be sure to avoid obscure bugs.
• Syntax a bit stricter than C, but not enough. Type system quite weak with automatic casting, still better than the "convert everything to everything else" of JS or PHP, but still too permissive for my tastes.

I have a love hate relationship with C++.

• Fast, zero abstractions, full memory control. This makes it one of the few fits for certain kind of programming: realtime / embedded / needing close control of memory behaviour
• Has gotten quite nice with each successive standard since C++11
• Strong and malleable type system. You can express many things with it.
• Memory ownership is mostly a solve issue with smart pointers.
• Decent IDE support with CLion (although you will need RAM)
• Depending on where you are coming from, more accessible than Rust
• Some amazing libraries out there (Qt), easy interop with C libraries
• Great compilers

There's many things I could say about why I hate C++, but that's not what you are asking for.

One of my mentor who taught me C++ during my school days, used to say:

If you are not smart enough to code in C, you choose C++ .

Other than that, It has been 10 years I last wrote C++ during my college days, Few years ago, I was watching a youtube video on C++ and didn't know about auto type, and many other functionalities.

I am not qualified enough to pitch for C++ but I am subscribed to following channels to keep me updated on the new features of C++ programming languages. So for anyone interested:

1. Cᐩᐩ Weekly With Jason Turner
2. CppCast

It is an old language that is still very popular. This means 2 things:

• You have a huge knowledge base: Forum, documentation, peoples, well established libraries, ...
• You will still find these competencies in the next years to ensure maintenance of your product. It is not a new trend that will be obsolete in 6 months.

Best Language for Perfomarce, Low Level Programming, Memory Management, Constraint on Object Oriented Programming and a Good Standard Library with so many function.
Obviously there is a minimum requirement... some years of experience and a good knowledge of the language, in the other cases there are a lot of possibilities to do worse than other languages.

C++ has a rich past and a bright future.

Its past 40 years showed its value when it comes to writing low-level performance-critical code.

Its past 10 years also showed that it's not an old language staying with us for legacy reasons. The industry receives a new version every three years based on the rigorous processes of the standardization committee. These versions brought us things such as smart pointers or concepts that help us write similarly performant but easier to read, easier to write code as before.

The predictable schedules, the new features already in the pipeline and the rich ecosystem guarantee that C++ will stay with us for a long time not only as a must-use but as a want-to-use language.

If you like C#, imagine if the compiler automatically inserted "using" for you. You never needed to remember to write it. C++ does that.

Lots of C++ features are about letting developer hide complexity (almost always from the caller). When used correctly, the higher level ("business logic") code can use instances of types and safely assume that they are doing the right thing. You can then compose those solutions to build up the actual solution that you're trying to do, relying upon each component to do the right thing. (This is not possible in garbage collected languages because you never know when or if the garbage collector will run.)

For a concrete example, imagine that you are writing a program that records your screen while a window is up.

In other languages, you will need to remember to stop the recording, otherwise you will corrupt the file. There may be several ways that the window can close, so you will need to make sure that function is called in every possible control flow.

In C++: Make the handle to the video recorder a field of the window (NOT the memory address of the handle, but the actual handle itself). When the window gets destroyed, it will destroy all fields. If the person who wrote the video recorder made sure to stop any pending recordings when its handle is destroyed, then the compiler will automatically call stop. When the window instance is destroyed, the video recorder has no-where to live, so it is destroyed, and its destruction process safely stops the recording.

The caller didn't need to think about this, even if a (normal) error is encountered.

(Normal error meaning that your program is still in control of execution. It won't help you if the OS forcibly stops your execution, or you encounter a power failure, etc. Basically, if a "finally" would have helped you in another language, then you can rely upon C++ just doing the right thing without the caller needing to remember anything.)

I've never written C++ so I'll be following this thread with excitement!

able to write cross platform libraries that you can share almost everywhere - mobile, backend services, various desktop OS's.