C++ Modules: A Broken Promise?

2025-09-01

This article takes a pessimistic view on the progress of C++ modules. The author argues that if C++ modules cannot demonstrate a 5x (preferably 10x) compilation speedup across multiple existing open-source codebases, they should be abandoned. The article highlights the challenging development journey, citing the tight integration required between compilers and build systems as a major hurdle. The author emphasizes that the focus should be on improving compilation speed rather than addressing relatively rare issues like macro leakage. He recounts the standardization process, pointing out underestimation of implementation difficulties. Finally, the author suggests an alternative approach – `import std` – while acknowledging its limited potential for improvement.

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GitHub CEO's AI Claims: Fabricated Data or Something Else?

2025-08-09
GitHub CEO's AI Claims: Fabricated Data or Something Else?

The GitHub CEO's recent blog post urging developers to embrace AI or face obsolescence is riddled with logical fallacies and inflated data. The author draws parallels to Soviet-era data manipulation, highlighting the study's minuscule sample size, lack of representativeness, and unreliable conclusions. The 'study' claims AI boosts developer ambition rather than saving time, contradicting the common narrative of increased efficiency, raising questions about its authenticity and motives.

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Development

A Self-Written C++ Standard Library: Simplicity vs. Completeness

2025-06-02
A Self-Written C++ Standard Library: Simplicity vs. Completeness

The author wrote a simplified C++ standard library for fun and shared it on Hacker News and Reddit. The post sparked a discussion, not about the library's completeness, but its naming and design philosophy. The author intentionally simplified the library's design, requiring all types to be 'well-behaved', thus avoiding complex exception handling. This significantly reduces the library's complexity but also limits its applicability. The post also explores the implementation of string splitting and iterators, comparing the differences between Python and C++. Ultimately, the author completed functionality for strings, regular expressions, and basic containers with impressively fast compilation times.

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Development

Rebuilding the C++ Standard Library from Scratch: The Pystd Project

2025-03-25
Rebuilding the C++ Standard Library from Scratch: The Pystd Project

Tired of the C++ Standard Library's (STL) abysmal compile times and unreadability, a self-employed open-source developer decided to build a replacement from scratch: Pystd. Taking inspiration from the Python standard library, he incrementally implemented file handling, string manipulation, UTF-8 validation, hash maps, vectors, and sorting. The result? A functional application in under 1000 lines of code, comparable to the STL version. Pystd boasts significantly faster compilation and smaller executable sizes. A unique versioning scheme (e.g., pystd2025) ensures perfect ABI stability, easing future upgrades and maintenance.

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Development Standard Library