Re: Revitalization

From: Ruben Perez (rubenperez038_at_[hidden])
Date: 2022-12-05 02:13:33

>
> It requires sustained effort to bring new devs into C++.
>

My experience as a young (28) C++ developer
who has recently become a Boost author:

Developing in C++ is exciting, and more for Boost,
which I've been using since college.
The main pain is not the language itself but the tools
and practices around it. These are the things I've found
really problematic:

1. Dependency management. There is a place where I've had
    to list my indirect dependencies. Depinst takes a lot
    of time to run. Depending on OpenSSL is a pain. If we're
    to attract any young devs, we can't say "uf, a dependency,
    that's going to be a problem".
2. Bjam. I love B2, I think it's much better than CMake
    in a lot of things. But the language doesn't help.
    The same set of concepts, but exposed in a modern
    scripted language (say Python, Starlark, JS)
    would be great.
3. Build times. I have a TU taking ~30s to build. I think we
    should pay more attention to this.

I can live with 2 and 3, but 1 is, for me, *the* reason
why I wouldn't do C++.

I hope my thoughts help anyhow.

Regards,
Ruben.

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