The other day, I wrote that C++ is not my favorite language and that
it’s eliminated most of what’s useful about C while retaining most of C’s
disadvantages. Then I saw this post, which says that the 2018 C++
committee is planning the deprecation and later removal of pointers
from the language. My immediate thought was that that proved what I
wrote.
Of course, the post is almost certainly an April Fools joke but here’s
the thing: No one seems to be sure. There’s a long discussion over at
Hacker News where half the commenters are sure it’s a joke and the
other half are convinced it’s true. I asked DuckDuckGo and it didn’t
know either.
It speaks volumes about the language that this should be so. The
language is so full of cruft and has made so many dubious decisions
that knowledgeable people can’t decide if this is another dubious
decision or a joke even though the discussion is happening on April
first.
I’m sure lots of Irreal readers have coded in
C++—I’ve coded in C++—and many of them
probably like the language but its appeal escapes me. These days there
are better alternatives for almost any project so it baffles me that
folks continue to choose C++. No doubt that’s begging to be ruthlessly
schooled on why folks do choose C++ but that’s part of what make the
Irreal community so much fun.