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Dconf 2014 Day 2 Keynote: The Last Thing D Needs -- Scott Meyers

The D Language Foundation

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  • Recommended by 5 people: 4 on Hacker News and 1 curated list.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2018 to 2023.
  • Presented by Scott Meyers, author of Effective C++
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Advanced. Deep dive for people who know the field.

19K views8 years ago5 recommendations

Programming languagesSystems programmingLanguage design and type systemsC++

Scott Meyers draws on his extensive C++ experience to warn the D language community about the dangers of accidental complexity.

"The Last Thing D Needs" -- The second keynote of DConf 2014, by Scott Meyers. From the abstract: ====================================================== Based on his 25 years of experience with C++, Scott Meyers will offer a recommendation—almost a plea—regarding the D programming language and its community. ====================================================== More info: dconf.org/2014/talks/meyers.html

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a classic talk on programming language design, complexity, and the pitfalls of C++.

jejones3141on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Modern C++ for C Programmers (2018)”

Yes, and everyone should watch Scott Meyers's awesome presentation at a D conference with the title "The Last Thing D Needs". (tl,dr version: The last thing D needs is someone like him, really to be so insanely convoluted, as C++ is, as to need someone like him.) Link to the video: link to this video
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programming-talkscurated list on GitHubRecommends

Under “C++”

The Last Thing D Needs 00:54:55 by **Scott Meyers** (2017)
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nordsieckon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?”

We Really Don't Know How to Compute: Gerry Sussman - link Zebras All the Way Down: Bryan Cantrill - link Jonathan Blow on Deep Work: Jonathan Blow - link Simple Made Easy: Rich Hickey - link Effective Programs - 10 Years of Clojure: Rich Hickey - link The Last Thing D Needs: Scott Meyers - link to this video
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SloopJonon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Meta Crush Saga: a C++17 compile-time game”

…work. You might enjoy the 2014 talk, called "The Last Thing D Needs." I don't want to spoil the punchline, which actually struck me as kind of bittersweet, but Scott talked about the distinction that Fred Brooks made in "No Silver Bullet" between essential and accidental complexity. C++ does have a lot of the latter. Edit: link for the 2014 talk: link to this video and for the 2017 talk: link…
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noselasdon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Rust in the 6.2 kernel”

> You cannot say the same thing about Rust. At least not yet. My fear is it's _very_ easy to fall in to the same trap as C++ has, and become a big mess. Scott Meyers have a very nice talk here: link to this video about all these traps and pifalls that we have to deal with in C++. That said, I'm starting a bit with rust and enjoy it so a lot, especially the tooling alone is worth it - and if I never have to write another line of C++, I would be very happy (ofc the real world argues I have a lot of C++ code that will need maintenance).
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nordsieckon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Never trust a programmer who says they know C++”

I'll just leave this fantastic talk here: The Last Thing D Needs - Scott Meyers (2014) link to this video The C++ type system really is quite... complicated.
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mananaysiempreon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Why I use the D programming language for scripting (2021)”

It is definitely related to C++ (both in ideology and in participants) and AFAIU even more features, but, for example, Scott Meyers views it1 as having less random stupid inconsistencies than C++. 1 link to this video
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Kranaron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Talking with the Inventor of C++”

…see it mostly as a sort of zombie language. 1. As I mentioned once I started my own business and needed to train new engineers on how to use C++, I started to look at the language from a fresh point of view and realized it really is a complex mess just to get basic things working. 2. Scott Meyers "retiring" from C++, and in particular this video: link to this video 3. I attended an ISO C++ meeting in Toronto and while I absolutely found that the people were very intelligent and knowledgeable, as well as well intentioned, I realized just how political C++ is and that much of its development and complexity is not due to technical constraints or driven based on what is in the best…
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vlovich123on Hacker News • Mentions

On “C++ Safety, in Context”

…doesn't clean up their act and steer the C++ community a bit better (e.g. still no ABI specification, no improvements on macros, no standardized build system, modules are a joke, no standardized package system, etc etc). They're not effective stewards not least of which because they can't even take good impactful ideas from Rust and copy them. 1 link to this video…
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fuzztesteron Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: What less-popular systems programming language are you using?”

>I'd kill for an "Effective D" book link The Last Thing D Needs - Scott Meyers - DConf 2014 link to this video
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AlexCoventryon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Writing an LLM from scratch, part 13 – attention heads are dumb”

Scott Myers, author of the extremely popular Effective C++ explainers, gave up on the language because of its churn. link to this video
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hitekkeron Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Core of Rust”

Your point on coherence is similar to the perspective of an ex-C++ maintainer. This video came out a decade ago link to this video and I feel his lesson went unheeded. It's relevant to the bigger and more dangerous concept of Conceptual Integrity by Fred Brooks.
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