I really cant Tell if the downvotes stem mostly from the AI usage or c++ copers
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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what's worse it's people like the mod here 🖕
It's 2h of AI pics with text read by an AI voice, which you didn't watch all the way through, but still felt you needed to share anyway.
Thanks for warning before I clicked the video. Saved me the click.
Edit: wasn't AI after all. Just a cheap microphone.
Or it's low bit rate audio which is easier for AI to generate.
The voice is not AI, the video is quite good imo minus the slop pics.
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I was thinking about that as well, why the fuck does he sound like Patrick star.
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javascript exists; his point is invalid
I also agree that Javascript is worse. C++ has two excuses for being bad:
- It has to be compatible with C, a language that's multiple decades older than it, and
- It is not garbage collected.
Javascript has neither of those two excuses. People only use it today because of the ubiquity of web programming. In fairness, it did kill off a few other technologies, like Flash and Java applets, but that was more Webkit and Chrome picking it as the winner than anything else.
Maybe these arguments are a bit hand-wavy, but the way I see it, it's like the C of the web programming era.
My Brother Here are 2 for you from a java guy:
- JS was hastily put together
- it was Never meant to be used for something other than some interactivity in the web Actually Here is a Third one:
- it had to be redesigned from a lisp to a java Like Language for Marketing purposes..
It also has a Lot of footguns but isnt nearly as cluttered and complicated and lets you Focus on your task at hand more
compatible with C
myth
It may not be perfectly compatible, but being mostly compatible with C was a large part of its selling point when it was originally announced. Without that, it probably wouldn't have seen as much adoption. However, that choice also led to a lot of difficult design decisions which have become a liability today.
mostly compatible with C
It's not mostly compatible, not even on the surface level, with any version of C post C89. And most of the ever-growing crap in the language came after the early years anyway, with constructs that are C++-exclusive.
JavaScript isn't even close to the worst language to ever exist.
I program JavaScript for a living. I’ve noticed how I’ve become blind to my language’s idiosyncracies, but I still believe it isn’t super bad. Especially with all the new shiny features that were piled on ever since 2018-ish (I think).
It is definitely nowhere near as bad as C++. And I’m only 6 minutes into the video.
There are two types of languages:
- Ones people complain about
- Ones that don't get used
JavaScript, especially when using TypeScript, is quite frankly one of the most pleasant development experiences. Yes, there are still footguns here and there due to poor early choices and maintaining decades of backwards compatibility (===, etc), but literally all of them are caught by basic linting.
Go try using Salesforce's bastardized version of old Java (Apex) if you want to experience a truly unpleasant language.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but I want to point out that you can't say the JS is pleasant to use while at the same time saying that that is the case if you are using another language that transpile to it. And specially when said language or "improved syntax" was created with the sole purpose to address shortcomings in JS.
Well two things:
-
yes I can. It's perfectly possible for a slice of pie to be pleasant, and a slice of pie with ice cream to be more pleasant.
-
the original point of discussion to kick off this thread was claiming that js is the least pleasant.
It’s perfectly possible for a slice of pie to be pleasant, and a slice of pie with ice cream to be more pleasant.
In my personal opinion though, that's not how I would describe Javascript vs. Typescript. Javascript was basically replaced overnight, to the point where you should be very harshly criticized for ever using it these days unless you're maintaining a legacy project.
Yeah, we're describing it the same way. A slice of pie with ice cream is preferable unless you don't have ice cream available.
If you want to go on a rant about JavaScript then just do so, stop trying to goad someone into an argument about it.
I'm not trying to goad you into an argument, though I could have admittedly phrased things better. I just can't think of any reason why someone would want adopt Javascript as it is with all of its problems. A slice of pie is better than nothing at all. On the other hand, using Javascript when a much better alternative exists (namely Typescript) would be a significant liability in my opinion.
In fact, pretty much everyone on our front-end team at work would agree too - they're pretty much unanimous in saying that Javascript should basically never be used.
I wholeheartedly agree that TypeScript effectively supercedes JavaScript if you're starting a new project.
JavaScript is still not the most unpleasant language to use though.
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I'm all for humourous roasts of things, but does anyone really find this funny? Was the author possibly being serious? I don't know. What I do know is that I stopped watching after the first four examples because they were all deliberately incorrect or misleading, but also didn't seem funny to me.
- Crazy initialization
That sure is a lot of ways to initialize a variable! Even though some of these variables are quite different and would be initialized differently from each other in many other languages, even only counting the initializations that are functionally equivalent, there are a bunch of abuses of syntax that I've never seen used in the wild.
At this point I had hope that this was meant to be amusing.
- Printing to the console
C++ has had a version of C's printf function from the very beginning. That weird stream syntax has some hardcore fans but many people ignore it. I did my CS degree close to 30 years ago, and the only time I used stream syntax was for one lab class exercise in which we had to show that we understood how to use stream syntax.
They still could be going for a comedy roast, I guess.
- Getting a random number
Much like the printf statement for number 2 above, C++ had its own version of C's rand function from the start. I've never even heard of the stuff that's being shown in this part of the video.
OK that was virtually the same fake point as the previous one, and still no punchlines in sight.
- Having to type "static_cast" every time you recast a variable
Nope, you don't. You're free to ask the compiler to automagically recast your variables to another type without giving any further detail just like you can in C. In fact, they're often called "C-style casts". There are even implicit casts, where you literally don't add anything, and just cross your fingers that the compiler does what you think it should do. It's like a little bit of the thrill of dynamic typing brought into C++! By using the static_cast keyword, you can tell the compiler that you understand that there's a potential issue with this recast, but that you expect that the standard way of handling it will be fine. There are other keywords for more unusual situations; it's not just a random bit of busywork added for no reason.
I don't think it was a comedy roast, more like a rant.
The core message of the video (and I do agree with that) is that C++ is incredibly cluttered and that there are dozens of ways to do the same simple thing.
And sure, you don't need to know them all when writing code, but when reading someone else's code you need to know all of the options to understand it.
- Crazy initialization That sure is a lot of ways to initialize a variable! Even though some of these variables are quite different and would be initialized differently from each other in many other languages, even only counting the initializations that are functionally equivalent, there are a bunch of abuses of syntax that I’ve never seen used in the wild.
Initialization in C++ is so simple that somebody wrote a nearly 300-page book on the subject: https://www.cppstories.com/2023/init-story-print/
I plan to read it after finishing this 260 page book on move schematics in C++: https://www.cppmove.com/
Initialization in C++ is so simple that somebody wrote a nearly 300-page book on the subject
There's a book about 101 ways to cut potatoes. Perhaps that could be a real mike-drop bit of evidence that we shouldn't be cooking potatoes.
Here's a 249-page book "just" about atomics and locks in Rust. Does a book this large about only one aspect of Rust prove that it's a terrible language? No, because as with the C++ book, if we look at the summary of contents we can see that it actually covers a great deal more, simply with a focus on those topics.
Luckily we don't have to be compete masters of every aspect of a language in order to use it.
Honestly, I think that modern C++ is a very piecemeal language with no clear direction, and it has many issues because of that. But the title and page count of a single book is not a convincing argument of anything.
Here’s a 249-page book “just” about atomics and locks in Rust. Does a book this large about only one aspect of Rust prove that it’s a terrible language? No
If that book was about a million ways of how to just use atomics in Rust, then yes, that would be potentially bad. But SURPRISE SURPRISE, it's not. As you can see for yourself.
Not sure what you were getting at there. Even hard C++ copers don't attempt to argue against the fact that C++ is huge, and not only that, it's the biggest language around by an easy margin (this can be roughly and superficially measured by comparing spec sizes).
It's not the size, but rather everything on top of it, and contributing to it, from general incoherence to bad design to countless misfeatures, that require non-trivial argumentation.
Your comment seems to be trying to disagree with me, but I think you wrote almost the same things that I wrote in the comment that you're replying to:
- The Rust book is about much more than just what's in its title (my point being that this also goes for the cited C++ book).
- C++ is a baroque and sometimes unwieldy language.
if you like C++, you dont know it well enough
Or you are a masochist and just used to the abuse.
The video isn't humorous, it's dead serious. C++ is terrible language.
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Im sure his point could be made in less than 2 hours
And it was, the last half hour is not about c++ but his bad editor.
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I knew what this was before I clicked the post... since this is a feature movie I quite like and it's a guilty pleasure of mine. 😆 (No offense intended to anybody who likes C++. To each their own.)
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