Uphill

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 1 June 2015 at 17:17:18 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Monday, 1 June 2015 at 16:57:00 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>> I use macros for stuff like exceptions all the time - e.g.
>>
>> THROW(MyException, ("This value is wrong: %d", foo));
>
> ick! Yes,  if you want stack-trace like information in 
> release-builds you need to use the macro system, but that's 
> because __FILE__ and __LINE__ are macros! That's a C deficiency.
>  Usually your debugger gets you what you are looking for 
> without this in debug builds, right?

Goodness no. The exception needs to have that information in it, 
and I want exceptions logged so that I can track what happened 
without running in a debugger - and in release mode as well as 
debug mode. And it's not like I can necessarily reproduce the 
problem by rerunning the program anyway, so relying on the 
debugger for this sort of thing just doesn't fly in general, much 
as it might in simple cases.

> (I don't use exceptions in C++)

My condolences.

> It's a problem if you need it. It is almost always used to 
> address language design flaws or other structural flaws.

Even if that's true, you're still stuck unless they fix the 
language. If/until C++ provides alternate solutions to the kinds 
of things that require macros right now, you need macros. I can 
always wish that C++ were better, but if I'm programming in C++, 
I have to deal with what it provides. The only way around that is 
to use another language (like D), and it that were an option, I 
probably wouldn't be using C++ in the first place.

It sounds to me like you're too against macros for your own good. 
Sure, they suck, but that's just life with C++ unless you want to 
make life harder for yourself. Simply wishing that the situation 
were better doesn't make it so.

- Jonathan M Davis