I think even if C++ had a periodic ABI break that even a better std::regex spec is fundamentally wrong.

As someone who ships cross-platform I never ever want different platforms to have different implementations for things that are not actually platform specific. Having different implementations of std::string depending on if I’m on windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android, PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo is a profoundly terrible thing to do.

std::regex is so worthless that no one uses it. My codebase gives CI warnings when it’s used. so it’s not even really a problem. It is indicative of a larger problems.

> C++'s separation of spec from implementation is clearly functional.

Your bar of “clearly functional” is is not a compelling or meaningful bar. What a weird fallacy.

C++11 was pretty great and meaningfully modernized the language. The amount of useful good things in each following release got smaller and smaller. Maybe just one or two useful improvements in C++20. Almost nothing in C++23. And now C++26 has failed to pass. It’s grinding to a halt. The biggest recent features such as concepts and modules have been catastrophic failures.

Those failures aren’t all due to my specific complaint of “battery specs are a bad idea”. But “functional” is the lowest possible bar. And one could argue that as a whole isn’t being met.

Why on earth would I want a different implementation of std::deque on each platform I use because the compiler team needed to provide one? It’s madness!

There is absolutely no reason for std::deque to be a specification. The committee should either ship a committee library for std::deque or they should leave it to the community. They can provide a battery or they can not. Providing a spec for a battery that is both over and under specified is the absolute worst possible choice.

C++ is unique in that it defines a spec for STL but not implementation. The result is something that is both overspecified and underspecified.

Including batteries is fine. Including a spec for what the batteries should look like is such a profoundly bad idea that no other major language does it.

Is it? At this point I associate Docker with slow build times and later upon layers of abstraction to try and cache and make it not slow. But it’s a never ending battle.

I can’t run Isaac Lab on my work cloud VM because the system has glibc2.34 instead of 2.35. The only way to hack around this is to move everything into Docker. So now there’s a big huge convoluted build process just because I changed a line of code. It’s utterly miserable with no redeeming qualities.

Again none of this is Docker’s fault. But the fact that Linux is so incapable of running software that Docker needs to exist is damning.

For reference Docker is not popular on Windows because Windows can simply run software programs without requiring Docker.

Yet for some reason people think Linux is a good platform for developers. It is bewildering…

Cloud gaming is too small to be relevant in any way. That’s why it’s ignored.

This is not a slight on Docker itself. It’s a slight on the conditions that induced Docker to exist.

One of the great selling points of one of my projects is “this is easy to run without needing Docker”.

You just blew my mind with this. This is shockingly profound.

Let me share with you my previous screeds on this topic:

* https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/dependencies-belong-in-... * https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/using-zig-to-commit-too...

They’re semi-adjacent in that they are about build systems that don’t suck. (buck2 is also mostly TheWay but also not usable outside of Meta and has room for improvement).

Save us from Git and CMake Steve! Please I beg you!!

I agree so hard. It’s inertia is too strong and we’ve stalled progress for a decade.

Centralized, virtual file system, all commits automatically on cloud, large binary files totally fine, Mercurial CLI. It’s fantastic. People who only use Git really don’t understand how much better things can be.

I'd be ecstatic if more people used AI to share more cool things they've done. that'd be awesome. more of this blog post please.

> You don't know that they didn't read it!

If someone sends me AI slop to read then I am going to assume and behave as if they didn’t read it until proven otherwise.

It is the responsibility of the sender to proactively say “I read this and stand by it as at least mostly correct and reasonable”.

They are also free to say “AI slop have not yet proof read”. Then I have an informed choice.