(From LtU) Herb Sutter’s update about additions to the C++ language, including additions to the standard libraries for polymorphic function object wrappers, and tuple types. Most proposed additions to the standard library gestate in the Boost library for a while, and tuples are no exception.
Static vs. dynamic type systems. It used to be an easy choice. Along with the rest of the human race, I make typos all the time. If I made a typo whilst typing a function call in some rarely-used bit of code, a static type system would tell me. Also, I’m a great believe in making computers do as much work as possible so that I can leave work on time and do something more fun. I like the idea of a compiler whirring away, checking lots of common mistakes for me. Letting go of that seemed dangerous…
John Wiseman has a cool example of a debugger visualization plugin. Why be content with little expandable tree views of your datastructures when you could have arbitary visualization plugins? It’s hard to be excited about stuff like DevStudio’s autoexp.dat when you see what is possible elsewhere.
It’s harder to do this in C/C++ than lisp/smalltalk because you’re operating at the level of bytes and memory addresses rather than objects. A visualization plugin for a C++ debugger would have to be ultra-careful not to dereference bad pointers or it would bring the whole debugger down. Also, since objects in C++ don’t carry around much information about their type, you’d have to manually ensure that you update the plugin if someone adds a new data member to the type which the plugin shows. Perhaps you can get enough information from the debug info.
Hmm, so once again something which is easy in lisp or smalltalk becomes “possible, if you’re very careful” in C/C++.