How different are C and C++? Can I still say C/C++?

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How different are C and C++? Can I still say C/C++? // Let's have it out. A discussion about standards drift, languages, culture, community, and recommended best practices. I'd love to hear what you think.

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Welcome! I post videos that help you learn to program and become a more confident software developer. I cover beginner-to-advanced systems topics ranging from network programming, threads, processes, operating systems, embedded systems and others. My goal is to help you get under-the-hood and better understand how computers work and how you can use them to become stronger students and more capable professional developers.

About me: I'm a computer scientist, electrical engineer, researcher, and teacher. I specialize in embedded systems, mobile computing, sensor networks, and the Internet of Things. I teach systems and networking courses at Clemson University, where I also lead the PERSIST research lab.

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[denizural]

Difference between C and C++:
C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot; C++ makes it harder, but when you do it blows your whole leg off.
--Bjarne Stroustrup

[juanjpnv]

Step 1: Start a .cpp file
Step 2: Use only pure C statements
Step 3: Get cpp fans tears

[BrunoMiguelLoureiro]

Hey Jacob, what about a "Mind repeating that in C/C++?" t-shirt for the next video, that should blow some minds off... :)

[andydelle]

Funny story about pure high level software programmers. I did a project once where the microcontroller had 128 BYTES of RAM. Not 128meg, 128K - just 128 BYTES. And I needed 64 of those bytes for dynamic string storage. But I did have 4K of on-chip ROM. So the program was written with many function blocks duplicated in the C code - very few subroutines and those were only one level deep at that.
Well a staff programmer not with engineering was highly critical of my "sophomoric" code. "Don't you understand the basics of sub routines?" Well I suggested he re-write the code as efficiently as possible and use all the subroutines you want. Then see if it runs! The big time programmer then got a lesson on stacks and low level microprocessor architecture! There simply was not enough stack space with 64 bytes of RAM left to be jumping around in and out of nested sub routines. But there was more than enough ROM where I could duplicate code blocks.

[kellingc]

I always looked at C++ and C as Delphi is to Borland's Turbo Pascal or Lazarus to Free Pascal Compiler.

I had a CS professor tell me (well the class) that he wasn't here to teach us a language, but how to program. Once you know how computers work, and you know how to organize data, a programming language is just a matter of syntaxes. As computer scientists, you should be able to know how and why to do something, and whatever rules you are following for coding is inconsequential.

[davidbell]

C is C, it is austere but focused. If you use it for any time it's likely you will use most of it.
C++ by contrast is many things. It's huge and supports multiple paradigms - some of which are sort of contradictory. I'm not sure anyone uses all of it.
The cool thing with C++ is that you can just use the pieces you want. Sometimes just the pieces you want look a lot like C ... that's when you are in C/C++ territory.
It would be lovely if lovely if C++ was a perfect superset of C.

[lean.drocalil]

I really like C++, but I've always been a big fan of C, especially because I learned to program in the latter first. Whenever I write C++, I tend to adhere to good old Cish style. I don't see the point in using some of the so-called modern C++ features when there are simple and effective "C" ways to accomplish what's needed. I've been criticized once or twice for treating C++ as "C with smart structs", now I know those people belong to the Little C++ mob and I'm glad I've watched this video 😝

[Mronmovies]

Pirates of the Caribbean reference was genius!

Personally, I write C in an object oriented way using structs with function pointers inside.
When I write C++ code it's pretty much C with classes and a few STL objects like queue, deque, map and so..

[bogdanryabyshchuk]

Good point. I love C++. I dev firmware code. If C++ couldn’t run lean, if I couldn’t have void * and char * strings, it would be useless to me. The beauty of C++ is being able to travel up and down the complexity and abstraction levels, depending on what you need.

The thing that bothers me is the somewhat outdated syntax in C for things like pointers. I mean, were there really no additional special chars other then * that they could have used in the 70s? Probably not. But now it would be cool to have for instance a separate dereference character and a separate address off character. For instance, I would really love to see @ replacing & as the address of operator. And & being strictly a reference symbol.

But that’s just wishful thinking obviously. But overall, having the ability in C++ to drop to the lowest of abstraction levels is the thing that makes it C++.

[PatrickPoet]

I'm a retired systems programmer for reference. I wrote in C and loved it. My home compiler was Aztec C. At some point they included an extra pre-processor cfront. I dove in. I read standards for fun. I learn each new idiom. Most of my career I wrote in C++. It's my jam. I agree with everything you say. Additionally, I'd add that when someone gives you a list of rules they've forgotten how to improvise. When someone takes the list of rules and considers them the most important thing, not the language or the task, they're toxic. The code they write will drag and be strange and unproductive and liable to lots and lots of otherwise easily avoided bugs. That's all. Just sayin'. Don't @ me

[BSPNode]

I try to deviate from C when working in C++, but I really like to use the Standard C functions in C++ when I get a chance.

When Bjarne Stroustrup, meant C with classes, I took that personally 😆

[johnwellbelove]

I wrote embedded code in C for 12 years. I then moved to a new job and was given the chance to look at C++ (something I'd previously dismissed before as inappropriate for embedded). After getting the basics of C++ I realised that I had basically been, unknowingly, reverse engineering C++ in my C code for years! I had manually been designing, writing and debugging features that the C++ compiler gave me for free!
Since about 2000 I've not coded for embedded projects in anything other than C++.
I found that the C++ code, whilst more abstract, was usually as fast, or faster, than the C it replaced.

[technowey]

I wrote a complex module in C++. The binary image was over 240 Kbytes.
I then rewrote the same module in C. The binary was 47 Kbytes.

Encapsulation is easy in C using a pointer to a struct as a handle that's passed to functions, similar to the "this" pointer in C++. The struct can even be in the implementation file, and the header file can declare an opaque handle, which effectively makes the encapsulated data private.

Inheritance and especially polymorphism are useful at times, which is why I still write C++. I write mathematical code a lot, and I also find it very useful to overload operators. So, I'm a fan of C++ and a fan of C.

[Nacalal]

C is simplistic, it gives you the basic tools to build anything, which often begins with building the tools you need to get what you want to get done, done.
C++ is not simplistic, coming with many tools that are prebuilt for you in order to simply get things done as well as attempting to protect you from yourself through abstraction.
The only issue is that the abstraction of C++ can sometimes make it difficult to track down an issue or understand what's really going on in the background.
Still think Bjarne said it best, "With C, it's easy to shoot yourself in the foot. With C++, it's far harder, but when you do, you blow your whole leg off.".
Also, never really thought 'char *'s were that complicated, the variable just points to the start of the string which gets read until the null terminator (\0) which is essentially how it's done in assembly.

[gengarboi]

I've only been programming in C++ for a few years now, so I may not have much authority to say anything on this topic, but one of the reasons I love the language is because it gives you an incredible amount of tools to work with for many different situations.

In my opinion, trying to force people to write code with certain guidelines or arbitrary rules is counterproductive for people new to the language. The best way to learn is to try new things, learn about what makes you curious and question rules! Be bold enough to challenge them so that you learn more about it! C++ has so many tools available but they're all useless if you don't know how to use them.

To anyone who is relatively new to programming like I was a few years back, always always ALWAYS question things! The best way to become a better coder is to write code.

[aDifferentJT]

One of the really nice things about C++ is that many of the abstractions are as efficient if not more efficient than the equivalent C code so you can use them even in really constrained environments.

[TheBrainDunne]

Great video. I like c++. You the programmer choose what features you want to use and how to use them. Glad I learned c and then C++. I understand pointers are not the best but sometimes pointers are quicker and easier to program.

[yosefberger]

It bothers me more then it should when people complain that "C/C++" "is not a language", it's a short hand. It's a whole lot faster than "this generally applies to both C and C++", stop being so obtuse. Nine times out of ten the shorthand "C/C++" is used when comparing them to other languages in a more general sense ("Compilation can make execution faster as is the case with C/C++"), or when talking about more basic features like "how do I make a for loop?", and it's nice to make it known that this answer applies to both languages. Sure there can be lost nuance, and different best practices, but just explain it if it needs explaining. It's the whole GNU/Linux thing over again, though I've no idea which actually came first

[badwolf]

There's a cppcon talk of Kate Gregory complaining C++ courses get students used to coding C++ like it's C and then switching to the C++ style, as it makes it more difficult and less smooth to then get used to C++.

[draconicepic]

I personally find some of the additional features in C++ over C somewhat useful (like namespaces and methods). I think the main issue is the culture of OOP. There has become this class of programmers who will extol the "virtues" of OOP for every solution even when it makes no sense or causes code bloat.