CppCon 2018: Nicolai Josuttis “The Nightmare of Initialization in C++”

C++ initialization is such a convoluted mess that CppCon was able to have an entire hour dedicated to "The Nightmare of Initialization in C++". [this video] C++ has a rigorous standard. There is no rule that wasn't added for a reason. Nor are there lines of code with which you can specify which rule it must follow. The path to hell is paved with good intentions. Just because each step is logical and defensible doesn't mean the end result isn't fire and brimstone. I believe that good things are more than the sum of their parts. You often hear this with respect to creative works like movies or games. I think it also applies to source code, language design, and much more. The flipside is that bad things are less than the sum of their parts. I've shipped games that fall into this category. C++ initialization has a LOT of parts. And I would strongly argue the end result is less than the sum of those parts.

I think this depends to some extent on the type of job you're going for, which might seem trite but a graphics role is going to be different from a systems programming role. I've been writing Java for a long time and tired after a while of the JVM "getting in the way", and the lack of bare-metal acceleration available. Eventually designing and working on zero-GC systems led me to wonder why we didn't just write it in a compile-to-native language in the first place. I skipped both C and C++ and started hacking on x86 and amd64 assembly. It turned out that approaching C after that was fairly straightforward, with the dark corners of the standard libraries forming the still fairly gentle but steepest parts of the learning curve. I've been writing a toy project in it for a while and it's been a lot of fun. Implementing what I understsand to be Modern C's Best Practices have left me with something fairly usable :-O I've also looked at what you'll probably hear called Modern C++, but IMO it's and order of magnitude harder to get started on. I was watching Nicolai Josuttis' "The Nightmare Of Initialization in C++" the other day[1], which chimes with the first chapters of Scott Meyer's "Effective Modern C++". What a mess (C++ initialisation, not the book)! Java's potentially a better bet in the wider market as the number of job listings could be higher, but others may disagree. That said, Java is now a vast ecosystem and you'll need to learn at least one of its various build tools. I