I agree, my terms aren’t perfect, but as you stated there isn’t really such a thing as an interface in c++, traditionally this is achieved via an abstract base class which is what I meant by using them interchangeably.
I know there are many things you can do in c++ to enforce an interface, but tying this back to the original comment that inheritance is objectively bad, I don’t think there’s any consensus that this is true. Abstract base classes (with no data members) and CRTP are both common use cases of inheritance in modern C++ codebases and are generally considered good design patterns.
Meh. Been developing professionally with C++ for 10 years at this point. I’m one of the weird people that kinda likes C++ and its pragmatism despite all its warts.
I’d like C++ better if it didn’t have inheritance. There are better solutions to model interfaces, and without inheritance people can’t write class hierarchies that are 10 levels deep with a different set of virtual functions overridden (and new virtual functions added) at each level.
And yes, that is not hypothetical. Real codebases in the real world shipping working products do that, and it’s about as nice as you can imagine.
I agree, my terms aren’t perfect, but as you stated there isn’t really such a thing as an interface in c++, traditionally this is achieved via an abstract base class which is what I meant by using them interchangeably.
I know there are many things you can do in c++ to enforce an interface, but tying this back to the original comment that inheritance is objectively bad, I don’t think there’s any consensus that this is true. Abstract base classes (with no data members) and CRTP are both common use cases of inheritance in modern C++ codebases and are generally considered good design patterns.
Meh. Been developing professionally with C++ for 10 years at this point. I’m one of the weird people that kinda likes C++ and its pragmatism despite all its warts.
I’d like C++ better if it didn’t have inheritance. There are better solutions to model interfaces, and without inheritance people can’t write class hierarchies that are 10 levels deep with a different set of virtual functions overridden (and new virtual functions added) at each level.
And yes, that is not hypothetical. Real codebases in the real world shipping working products do that, and it’s about as nice as you can imagine.