Limitations of C++ range proposal

[Ali Çehreli]

On 09/16/2019 12:53 PM, jmh530 wrote:

> https://www.fluentcpp.com/2019/09/13/the-surprising-limitations-of-c-ranges-beyond-trivial-use-cases/ 
> 

That article is about just one feature of C++ (ranges) and it exposes 
many common issues with the language and its ecosystem. Four quotes from 
the article and my comments on each:

1) "having to come up with clever hacks to be able to do something as 
basic as this is not a good sign"

Amen.

Personally, enable_if is the first thing that I've seen right away as a 
hack.

2) "We need a reasonably coherent language that can be used by “ordinary 
programmers” whose main concern is to ship great applications on time. 
[Bjarne Stroustrup]"

Amen.

3) "It’s as if the issues of limited usability, code complexity, leaky 
abstractions and completely unreasonable compile-times are of no 
consequence whatsoever to the committee members?"

Amen.

(Just today I've realized that C++ did not take boost::shared_array; 
gotta research why that might have happened.)

4) "It seems to me that Bjarne Stroustrup’s plea from Remember the Vasa! 
fell on deaf ears (again, my subjective opinion)."

Amen!

Given all those important observations about C++ that are on just one 
subject, C++ is proof how irrational humans can be. Humans continue 
spending immeasurable amounts of time and money to stick with C++. We 
should see anthropological, psychological, mass hysterical, whatever 
research on this human behavior. (Stockholm syndrome has been suggested 
in the past.)

Ali