Re^6: Real life uses for closures. (update: disambiguation)

[BrowserUk]

Yes. I watched (the video of) Stroustrup's keynote There are some very interesting features in it; and some disappointments over what didn't get in.

The only problem is it'll probably be 2015 at least before the major compilers fully support the standard; and around 2025 before major projects will consider it safe to use any of the new features. :(

I mean C99 introduced inline functions which are a far better choice for most things that use those horrible multi-line extended macros that litter most OSS libraries and projects, but still you find those 30 line #define macros everywhere because -- apparent -- there may be some user in Outer Mongolia that still hasn't got a C99 compiler.

[davido]

In the case of C++11, the major compilers already support most of it. g++ is lacking on its regular expression support, and MSVC++ was a little slow with variadic templates, but I think they're implemented now. Most of what is most important is there; move semantics, rvalue references, ranged loops, auto and decltype, modified return value function syntax, reference counted pointers, lambdas, and so on.

But your second point is right on the mark; though everyone's excited to use these new features, often the new features are avoided in the name of backward compatibility, and I haven't a good feel for C++11 features being accepted into newer projects.

I can say that the standard library has been rewritten in most major implementations to take advantage of move semantics, which is a really big win that nobody really sees -- like trie optimization in Perl's regexes, it's just there behind the scenes.

Anyway.... I've taken us way off topic. I apologize for rambling in your thread. :)

[BrowserUk]

Anyway.... I've taken us way off topic. I apologize for rambling in your thread. :)

Actually, you haven't. The underlying motivation behind my asking the OP question was itself pretty off-topic -- though underlying that is very Perl-related -- and it is my belief that a truly modern (rather than a labeled-modern dialect), computer language like C++11 (or D2 or few others), is the future of Perl.

That is to say, I think that everything that is wrong with Perl5; and all the things that have gone wrong with the previous and ongoing attempts to implement Perl6; are firmly routed in the archaic programming languages and practices that have been and continue to be used to implement their infrastructure:

• Using macros to force inlining -- whether beneficial or not -- instead of inline functions.
• malloc & free rather than RAII;
• The pile'em high, wherever-it-fits heap-based memory use.
• Pointers instead of references;
• Consting & copying rather than move semantics in an attempt to solve the shared state problem.
• Emulating a register-rich cpu in software, atop inherently register-poor, stack-based hardware.
• Non-reentrant libraries, non-PIC, and god-object context encapsulation.
• Code that leaves the requirements of multi-threading to be retrofitted as an afterthought.

Until and unless truly modern coding practices are used to (re-)construct the infrastructure required to support dynamic languages -- Perl et.al. -- they will surely become less and less relevant in a modern world.

So far from off-topic rambling, your bringing up C++11 was right on-topic for the thought processes that led to this thread. Thank you.