I feel proponents of any programming language put a lot of spin around what isolated aspects it is good for, but fail to illustrate what a programmer in even one target domain gains from using it.
Are there programming language implementations unlike what is described above, that you feel back up their marketing?
Just as an example, neither the C++ documentation nor its sagely bloggers have ever shown why it is a good fit for, say, systems programming. A really neat way of handling bit-level data is actually in Erlang’s bit syntax.
Separately, I spluttered when I realized that Boost includes 2 statechart libraries which proclaim the approach is widely useful, but nothing else in Boost uses it - not asio or its ilk, not the parser libraries, not the graph library.
Erlang requires a runtime environment, which disqualifies it for situations where you don’t have a filesystem to load the runtime from, like developing a kernel or for microcontrollers.
Of the popular languages, your choices are virtually just C, C++ and Rust for that.
More towards your general question: Not needing a runtime environment also means you can use C, C++ and Rust for cross-language libraries. For example, SQLite and OpenSSL have just been implemented once in C, and then you simply have a thin wrapper for Java, Python etc…
If you are looking to build a library that can be used by as many devs as possible, that’s a selling point which is hard to ignore.
I wasn’t thinking not needing a runtime is a language feature. After all, needing a runtime hasn’t prevented Erlang from running on microcontrollers (Atom VM, GriSP); or Python either.
Basically, C++ and its ilk have no language feature for their purported stronghold of systems programming. Inertia isn’t a language feature unless the language has actual features (like, say, Common Lisp).
You picked out my one argument where you have a (weak) counterargument and then declare there’s no other arguments. Does not sound like you want to understand…
I did you the courtesy of replying with a bit of info about Erlang, even though you weren’t addressing the actual point about lack of language features like Erlang’s. BTW, by conceding that the argument for C++ on microcontrollers is weak given other languages doing better on that front, you are conceding that C++ doesn’t have features to help systems programming.
Arguments are being made for language platform features when the question of language features comes up. I doubt it has to do with people not understanding the question.
More likely just scratching heads to find atleast 1 useful C++ (or any other mentioned language) feature that actually is useful to the domains professed to be “supported”. This isn’t an attack, I am in this boat too! The utility of its language features seems to be no more than “atleast it is not assembly”.
Boost is too monolithic to be useful. I am not surprised it has redundant functionality. Get the great parts of Boost like asio separately.