this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
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Programmer Humor
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I've heard this trope before but I'm skeptic. I'm not a C expert but I can't believe memory bugs in that language are so much more benign than in C++.
With C, you need to carefully craft your own gun with just iron ingots and a hammer. You will shoot yourself in the foot, but at least you'll have the knowledge that it was your craftsmanship that led to it.
With C++, there are already prebuilt guns and tons of modifications that you can combine at will. If you shove it in the right way, you can make a flintlock shoot a 50 cal, but don't complain when your whole leg gets obliterated.
It is indeed a trope and a mostly false one - C++ introduces more dramatic ways to footgun yourself but a plethora of tools to make it easier to avoid them - in particular the built in library functions actually encourage good C++ programming practices...
Well, let's just ignore
gets()
.Memory bugs are only a tiny share of the foot guns in C++
They are, but it's also more than that. C++ is like if git were a programming language.
Yep. Incredibly powerful, and it will not hesitate to help you blow your own legs off.
The big difference is that git will save your legs in
reflog
for a couple of weeks.Learning about reflog was a game changer. Now I’m never afraid of breaking my branch. If I mess up, I can always
git reset —hard
to a previous state.Another game changer was learning that a perfectly valid way of doing squash is to do
git reset
to an earlier commit and then dogit commit -a
. Saves a lot of rebasing headache.Interesting analogy, please explain