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Introducing a Memory-Safe Successor Language in Large C++ Code Bases - John McCall - CppNow 2023

CppNow · 18.5K views · 2023-09-06 · 1:22:21

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Overview

John McCall of Apple's Swift team presents at CppNow 2023 on introducing a memory-safe successor language into large C++ code bases. He argues incremental improvement of C++ hits hard limits and explains Swift's C++ interoperability for gradual migration.

On Hacker News

Used as the primary source for Apple's stated plan to make Swift its successor to C++ and for how interop supports gradual transition.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2023–2025

Topics

C, C++, Rust, Go & systems languagesProgramming language designSecurity & hacking
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swiftc++memory safetylanguage interopapple

What people said

glhaynes · 2024-06 · Recommendation

I'm not a (direct) user of the C++ interop, but everything I've heard about it has been quite positive. A few hopefully relevant resources, first a couple of videos: - "Introducing a Memory-Safe Successor Language in Large C++ Code Bases" (John McCall; CppNow 2023) [VIDEO] - "Swift as C++ Successor in FoundationDB" (Konrad Malawski; Strange Loop 2023) [LINK] And then a series of blog posts by Doug Gregor: - "Swift for C++ Practitioners" [LINK] And finally: - "Mixing Swift and C++" (Swift.org) [LINK]

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mannuch · 2023-12 · Recommendation

I wonder what the author thinks about Swift’s new C++ interop story? Since the Swift compiler includes Clang, and can thus compile both your C++ and Swift into LLVM IR, without the need for an FFI later between the two, couldn’t this be the “Typescript for C++” that the author points out a space for? The Swift folks are very much thinking about Swift as a C++ successor that can be incrementally migrated to so I’m a bit surprised the author didn’t discuss it further — especially given Swift’s spiritual similarities to Rust. There’s a couple great talks on this by folks on the Swift team. John McCall at CppNow [VIDEO] Konrad Malawski at StrangeLoop 2023 [LINK]

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pjmlp · 2023-09 · Recommendation

Java also compiles to native code on Android. Try to write an iOS application using only C and C++, instead of either Objective-C or Swift. "Swift was designed from the outset to be safer than C-based languages, and eliminates entire classes of unsafe code" -- [LINK] "Swift is a successor to the C, C++, and Objective-C languages. It includes low-level primitives such as types, flow control, and operators. It also provides object-oriented features such as classes, protocols, and generics, giving Cocoa and Cocoa Touch developers the performance and power they demand." -- [LINK] Some of the information related their Safe C dialect, [LINK] "2023 EuroLLVM - Keynote: “-fbounds-safety”: Enforcing bounds safety for production C code" [LINK] Finaly a recent gem from CppNow 2023, "Introducing a Memory-Safe Successor Language in Large C++ Code Bases" [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by CppNow, played through YouTube.

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