Google Engineers Lift The Lid On Carbon - A Hopeful Successor To C++

[Ironmask]

There are languages people bitch about, and languages nobody uses. ( see https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/)
Seems Carbon's gonna be popular

Even if its just a cleaned up C++ not dragged down with forever ABI compatibility its gonna be worth it. But given that Chandler Carruth is involved, it could turn out really good.

I don't know what your point was in posting this metric, but whatever it was, this seems to just be there to point out what languages the industry's ancient infrastructure is written in and is more about maintaining it than writing new systems. It literally says Visual FoxPro is more popular than Lua. This has to be talking from some perspective of the ancient 90s infrastructure in IBM's basement rather than actual real-world community usage, because as an end-user in the programming community, this is more like some bizzaro science fiction than any kind of useful metric whatsoever.

[RedEyed]

So this is more like a fresh (go-like?) syntax for C++ rather than a completely new language? It certainly looks boring (which might or might not be a gt thing). But I guess if you're stuck with C++ it could be nice, like for writing UIs using Qt. Maybe even as bridge to write bindings for other languages. Maybe?

Writing UI on compiled languages is odd and expensive.

[cl333r]

HERE WE GO AGAIN!

I think we need to start addressing the concept of cognitive pollution, that you can make too many ideas and technologies that, because of their abundance, actually stifle the industry rather than propel it. And Google pollutes in this sense like China pollute in the traditional one.

Nah, this is a good one, we need a real modern alternative to C++ and Rust ain't it, Carbon seems like Rust but without its borrow checker - exactly what we need.

[Ironmask]

Nah, this is a good one, we need a real modern alternative to C++ and Rust ain't it, Carbon seems like Rust but without its borrow checker - exactly what we need.

You can disable Rust's borrow checker and that's how most of Rust's internals and FFI operate.
Seems like a great effort of duplicated technology to make a whole new language because you can't find the off switch.

[cl333r]

They explicitly say "don't use this, use rust instead if you can." It's for people who apparently have massive C++ codebases they can't get away from but would still like to feel safe(ish) writing new code. That said, it doesn't support borrow checking (or even can) so I'm really skeptical that this brings any meaningful improvment.

Not really:

Developers that can use one of these existing languages should. Unfortunately, the designs of these languages present significant barriers to adoption and migration from C++. These barriers range from changes in the idiomatic design of software to performance overhead.

They're saying if you already migrated away from C++ and liking it stay where you are, the rest who can't migrate because of this and that here's a new modern language. This is exactly what I've been asking for - a modern replacement for C++.

[cl333r]

You can disable Rust's borrow checker and that's how most of Rust's internals and FFI operate.

How do you disable the borrow checker while not becoming a black swan (can use all the crates and whatnot)?

[Developer12]

Not really:

They're saying if you already migrated away from C++ and liking it stay where you are, the rest who can't migrate because of this and that here's a new modern language. This is exactly what I've been asking for - a modern replacement for C++.

yes, really: https://twitter.com/HMPerson1/status...12143259668480
"if you can use rust, ignore carbon"

If you're using carbon because you can't migrate away from C++, you're by definition not using a "replacement." You're explicitly using carbon because C++ can't be replaced.

The modern *replacement* is Rust.

[Ironmask]

How do you disable the borrow checker while not becoming a black swan (can use all the crates and whatnot)?

What do you mean? Are you assuming libraries break if you disable the borrow checker?
The borrow checker is compile time, not run time. And you disable it locally, by making Rust "forget" who owns a particular variable.
The borrow checker is not forced on you, it's a sane default. It's more sane to have the language track and monitor what memory belongs to what blocks of code, than to default to the world of null and dangling pointers. Rust has those, but you have to go out of your way to use them, instead of them being how the language implicitly works.

[cl333r]

What do you mean? Are you assuming libraries break if you disable the borrow checker?
The borrow checker is compile time, not run time. And you disable it locally, by making Rust "forget" who owns a particular variable.
The borrow checker is not forced on you, it's a sane default. It's more sane to have the language track and monitor what memory belongs to what blocks of code, than to default to the world of null and dangling pointers. Rust has those, but you have to go out of your way to use them, instead of them being how the language implicitly works.

You're clueless

[Ironmask]

You're clueless

Deep breathes. Use your words.