I’m a full time C++ developer, mostly doing high performance data processing and some visualization and TUI tools, and as someone loving C++, it’s not as simple as you frame it. In sufficiently complex code you still have to deal with these problems.
Rust has some good mechanisms in place to avoid these and there are things on the way for c++26 though.
I don’t mean to say that C++ is in any way without faults. If performance is crucial, that can definitely be a reason to forgo some of the guard-rails, and then you’re on your own.
I guess my issue with the “C++ is unsafe”-trope, is that it usually (in my experience) comes from people not having heard of all the guard-rails in the first place, or refusing to use them when appropriate. They write C++ as if they were writing C, and then complain that the language is unsafe when they’ve made a mistake that is easily avoided using stl-containers.
I’m a full time C++ developer, mostly doing high performance data processing and some visualization and TUI tools, and as someone loving C++, it’s not as simple as you frame it. In sufficiently complex code you still have to deal with these problems. Rust has some good mechanisms in place to avoid these and there are things on the way for c++26 though.
I don’t mean to say that C++ is in any way without faults. If performance is crucial, that can definitely be a reason to forgo some of the guard-rails, and then you’re on your own.
I guess my issue with the “C++ is unsafe”-trope, is that it usually (in my experience) comes from people not having heard of all the guard-rails in the first place, or refusing to use them when appropriate. They write C++ as if they were writing C, and then complain that the language is unsafe when they’ve made a mistake that is easily avoided using stl-containers.
Yes I agree on that. A lot of people write “C with classes” and then complain…