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I will hate you

Dear C++ library writer,

  1. If your library forces me to use new all over, I will hate you.

  2. If your library has types with bogus values, I will hate you.

  3. If the documentation for your library gets the terminology of its own domain wrong, I will hate you.

  4. If I say "My God, it's full of stars!" when I see the function signatures in your library, I will hate you.

  5. If your library uses #define instead of const or inline, I will hate you.

  6. If your library has a base class of everything, I will hate you.

  7. If your library has singletons, I will hate you.

  8. If you think you can use a tool to automatically translate a library from Java, I will hate you.

  9. If the classes in your library have such clear responsibilities that you call them "managers", I will hate you.

  10. If your library does not play nice with the standard library, I will hate you.

  11. If functions in your library return error codes instead of throwing exceptions, I will hate you.

  12. If your library has public members that are designed to be used only from internal code, I will hate you.

  13. If your library makes use of the global namespace, I will hate you.

  14. If your library has types traits that don't play nice with SFINAE, I will hate you.

@rmaicle
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rmaicle commented Oct 10, 2014

Don't show him any C++ library in development or he will hate you :)

@superfunc
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@Blastinburn const is typesafe and obeys scope.

@luxe
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luxe commented Oct 11, 2014

If you don't provide common use case examples

@cgikoray
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Not everybody library has the benefit of using exceptions, especially performance critical code. Blanket statement such as that are usually not well-received.

@Fiona-J-W
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Performance is not an argument against exceptions, since they are faster then error-codes when not thrown (which should be almost all of the time); real-time behavior is. So: If the library is for controlling a plane or space-ship, yes, exceptions should be avoided.

Often when exceptions aren't used however, the reasons are clearly not as good. GUI-libraries for example should really use exceptions for their errors.

@kybernetyk
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If functions in your library return error codes instead of throwing exceptions, I will hate you.

If your library throws I won't use it.

@miguelibero
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the problem with managers is that they tend to not follow the S in SOLID

@SeAlgoAsoma
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I don't even know what this is about, I'm just here because I hate markdown.

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