UFCS fits perfectly with C++ culturally. In particular UFCS means when Library A provides a function that says it can twiddle a foozle, Library B that provides foozles and explicitly doesn't want you twiddling them can't stop anybody calling foozle.twiddle() and C++ says as a programmer the resulting mess lands in your lap.
> Except then it wouldn't be C++, but another language - which is fine.
Hogwash. It's C++ if they say it's C++.
When I first wrote some C++ I could write:
auto foo = something();
That was a very strange way to say "int foo" because auto meant automatic (ie local) storage and the default type was int. But it was legal C++ when I was a teenager.
But, today if I write:
auto foo = something();
That's a variable whose type will be chosen automatically (C++ auto is not merely inference and will choose something even when it isn't clear what you meant).
That was not another language, it was still C++ it was merely changed in an important way. In C++ 20 and particularly in the decision to not take Epochs, they decided C++ must never again be changed.
> They have made it so that you can steer clear of unsafe and complex territory for a lot more things.
No. Putting a little wooden fence along the crumbling edges of a fast mountain road and saying "Now it's safer" is almost worse than not bothering. It is concerning that this fools people.
Real safety looks quite different, consider my misfortunate::Maxwell type in Rust. The Rust traits this implements are definitively safe. If you try to store a bunch of Maxwells in a Hashset things won't go well for you since Maxwells aren't Equal (even to themselves) and yet they all Hash the same. But whereas in C++ such things get you Undefined Behaviour and all bets are off, in Rust we have safety and so the behaviour may be useless (e.g. infinite loop) but it is never Undefined. Our program is wrong but because it's safe we can successfully reason about why it doesn't work.
UFCS fits perfectly with C++ culturally. In particular UFCS means when Library A provides a function that says it can twiddle a foozle, Library B that provides foozles and explicitly doesn't want you twiddling them can't stop anybody calling foozle.twiddle() and C++ says as a programmer the resulting mess lands in your lap.
> Except then it wouldn't be C++, but another language - which is fine.
Hogwash. It's C++ if they say it's C++.
When I first wrote some C++ I could write:
That was a very strange way to say "int foo" because auto meant automatic (ie local) storage and the default type was int. But it was legal C++ when I was a teenager.But, today if I write:
That's a variable whose type will be chosen automatically (C++ auto is not merely inference and will choose something even when it isn't clear what you meant).That was not another language, it was still C++ it was merely changed in an important way. In C++ 20 and particularly in the decision to not take Epochs, they decided C++ must never again be changed.
> They have made it so that you can steer clear of unsafe and complex territory for a lot more things.
No. Putting a little wooden fence along the crumbling edges of a fast mountain road and saying "Now it's safer" is almost worse than not bothering. It is concerning that this fools people.
Real safety looks quite different, consider my misfortunate::Maxwell type in Rust. The Rust traits this implements are definitively safe. If you try to store a bunch of Maxwells in a Hashset things won't go well for you since Maxwells aren't Equal (even to themselves) and yet they all Hash the same. But whereas in C++ such things get you Undefined Behaviour and all bets are off, in Rust we have safety and so the behaviour may be useless (e.g. infinite loop) but it is never Undefined. Our program is wrong but because it's safe we can successfully reason about why it doesn't work.