I know it is a complete joke. But every time i think of c++ i am reminded of this prank article https://www-users.york.ac.uk/~ss44/joke/cpp.htm
Assembly it is, then
The day I learned that Linus shares my disdain for all things OOP was such a good day for me.
I feel the OOP debate got a bit out of hand. I hate OOP as well, as a paradigm.
But I love objects. An object is just a struct that can perform operations on itself. It’s super useful. So many problems lend themselves to the use of objects.
I’ve been writing a mix of C and C++ for so long I don’t even know where the line is supposed to be. It’s “C with objects”. I probably use only 1% of the functionality of C++, but that 1% is a huge upgrade from bare C IMO.
Agreed. Objects are nice and a great way to program. Composition is great. Traits/interfaces are great. Namespaces are great. Objects are a really nice way to reap the benefits of principles like these.
But then there are aspects of OOP that absolutely suck, like inheritance. I hate inheritance. The rules get very confusing very quickly. For example, try understanding overriding of methods. Do I need to call the superclass method or not? If not, does it get called automatically? If so, in what order? How do these rules change for the constructor? Now repeat this exercise for every OOP language you use and try not to mix them up… Java, C++, Python, etc.
Fortunately, it feels like we rely on inheritance less and less these days. As an example, I really like how Java allows you to implement
Runnable
these days. Before, if you wanted to run a thread, you needed a separate object that inheritedThread
. And what if that object needs to inherit from another one too? Things would get out of hand quickly. (This is a very old example, but with lambdas and other new features, things are getting even better now.)Anyway, long story short, I think OOP is a complicated way to achieve good principles, and there are simpler ways to achieve those principles than a full OOP implementation.
Me, when Linus’ opinion is different to mine: “Linus has such weirdly strong opinions about this”
Me when Linus’ opinion is the same as mine: VINDICATION
He is is OK with OOP. The Linux kernel is full of OPP C, but he doesn’t like C++
He’s not though, you should look into it
Look at the kernel code. It’s full of OOP C. There absolutely are objects in the kernel.
Yea but all that function pointer indirection can actually hurt performance (especially caching), some things in C++ actually can be faster just because the compiler is better at optimizing for that.
There is nothing you can do in C++ or C, that can’t be done in the other. It’s the kind of the point of those languages.
Technically you’re right, but I don’t think that changes what I said about optimization. There are still cases where equivalent C++ code can be faster than the C version merely due to different optimizations used.
Is there some lore about this I don’t know?
”C++ is a horrible language. It’s made more horrible by the fact that a lot of substandard programmers use it, to the point where it’s much much easier to generate total and utter crap with it. Quite frankly, even if the choice of C were to do nothing but keep the C++ programmers out, that in itself would be a huge reason to use C.”
There is no C++ allowed in the Linux kernel and Linus has gone on several major rants about how terrible a language it is.
Is it all C?
There’s assembly and makefiles too
Less of a joke answer, there has been work to allow Rust bindings for drivers.
According to the github analysis, the kernel repository is:
- C 98.3%
- Assembly 0.7%
- Shell 0.4%
- Makefile 0.2%
- Python 0.2%
- Perl 0.1%
- Other 0.1%
So yeah, its basically all C, plus a tiny bit of assembly for very low level bootstrapping and some helper scripts.
Yeah but a lot of that C code has inline assembly so it’s more like 5-10% asm.
Inline assembly is such a shit practice. But c++ bad.
Sometimes you can’t get around it though.
Torvalds just really dislikes C++. He’s gone on the record saying that he thinks it’s just not a good language. In his own words “C++ is just a waste, there is no design at all, just adding some scum on top of C.”
he’s not wrong
In the specific use case of kernel programming, maybe. But the Standard Template Library is awesome.
they dumped everything in the languaga, at least samething they needed to have right, it’s otherwise statistically impossible
Never before have I been so offended by something I 100% agree with.
What’s wrong with c++?
For kernel dev it would be a disaster, there’s too much implicit action, and abstractions that have unknown runtime cost. The classic answer is that everyone uses 10% of its features over C, but nobody can agree on which 10%.
As someone forced to get up to date with C++ recently, at this point it’s a language in full identity crisis. It wants so badly to be Rust, but it’s got decades of baggage it’s dragging along.
It do be like that… a lot of old languages want to be Rust…
And now there is precedent for Rust components in the Linux kernel.
I wonder what would offend Linus more: A version of the Linux Kernel with C++ or one that breaks the userspace…
A PHP kernel?