I don't code in C++ (although I'm somewhat familiar with the syntax). My understanding is the header files should only contain prototypes / signatures, not actual implementations. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. Have I misunderstood, or is that part of the joke?

[–] suy 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm not fully sure what the intent of the joke is, but note that yes, it's true that a header typically just has the prototype. However, tons of more advanced libraries are "header-only". Everything is in a single header originally, in development, or it's a collection of headers (that optionally gets "amalgamated" as a single header). This is sometimes done intentionally to simplify integration of the library ("just copy this files to your repo, or add it as a submodule"), but sometimes it's entirely necessary because the code is just template code that needs to be in a header.

C++ 20 adds modules, and the situation is a bit more involved, but I'm not confident enough of elaborating on this. :) Compile times are much better, but it's something that the build system and the compilers needs to support.

[–] bugsmith 3 points 7 months ago

Thanks. I didn't know about these advanced libraries, and had not heard of C++ modules either. Appreciate the explanation.

[–] Scoopta 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Not a C++ developer, I prefer C. You are right in general however my understanding is that classes which are generic using templates must be fully implemented in header files because of how templates are implemented. That being said this code doesn't appear to use templates so I'm not entirely sure I get it either?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I guess that's the joke, and I think we're all confused because it's wrong.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Templates can now be defined somewhere else. It’s a small improvement that no one uses.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Well, it's even just horrid code, because they're reading user input in some random associated function, so I think, it's safe to say that this is supposed to be horrid code.