C++ Variable Initialization

Good question! I'm not entirely sure, perhaps it's defense against the compiler optimizing the initialization out?

Rust mandates that every field in a user-defined type is initialized at once. How do you propose to retrofit that into C without "constructors"?

constinit allows for constant initialization. Why, how enlightening! Now... what is constant initialization?

Ideally, there would be a keyword for it. So ‘A a;’ would not compile. You’d need to do ‘A a{};’ or something like ‘noinit A a;’ to tell the compiler you’re sure you know what you are doing!

i said "if a type has a constructor". but if you are fiddling around with ints and chars and the like, then you will need to initialise them. i have been writing c++ since the mid80s and have never found this to be a problem, or at least no more than it would be to use an uninitialised int variable in C.

I think that was the author's point. You _can_ use them this way but it's a hassle and most people don't do it. The language itself doesn't protect you against zero-initialisation errors, even though it could.

Initialisation in C++ is just footguns all the way down.

that’s just a choice by the language designer. nothing prohibits initialization at runtime.

I suspect that to many C++ programmers, most initializations of structs have unpredictable side effects because of how complex they are ;)

You're the first who has told me he doesn't like default initialization!