Gosh, I feel like a dinosaur. I didn't realize that pointers had become so exotic these days.
C++ is a fickle beast, but it is powerful and expressive. Like the grandparent, given that C++ is my best language, I do genuinely enjoy working in it when the situation fits.
For all of the talk of succinctness of Ruby, et al., I've had to rewrite a handful of Ruby lately in C++ for performance reasons and with a reasonable toolkit (e.g. Qt) really it wasn't much more code to get it done in C++ (about 30% more), for a runtime boost of about 1500%.
Qt's meta-object-compiler also adds things like introspection and call-by-name to QObject subclasses enabling some powerful things more typical of dynamic languages.
Granted, the real danger is that it blows up in the hands of someone not used to it, but it's a nice tool to have in your bag-o-tricks.
C++ is a fickle beast, but it is powerful and expressive. Like the grandparent, given that C++ is my best language, I do genuinely enjoy working in it when the situation fits.
For all of the talk of succinctness of Ruby, et al., I've had to rewrite a handful of Ruby lately in C++ for performance reasons and with a reasonable toolkit (e.g. Qt) really it wasn't much more code to get it done in C++ (about 30% more), for a runtime boost of about 1500%.
Qt's meta-object-compiler also adds things like introspection and call-by-name to QObject subclasses enabling some powerful things more typical of dynamic languages.
Granted, the real danger is that it blows up in the hands of someone not used to it, but it's a nice tool to have in your bag-o-tricks.