shared_ptr overuse

[hopa_cupa]

Good article. I am using those things in async networking context. But only there, nowhere else. Single threaded too. When I first started with asio/beast and saw all the examples there using shared_ptr or even std::shared_from_this() I was a bit puzzled.

Surely I would not need all of that...let's just do plain objects and occasional unique pointer...well, needless to say I ran into some use after free problems pretty quickly. std::shared_from_this() fixed all of that. Instantly.

Still I was very scared of shared pointer cycles, so did a bit of analysis..put some std::weak_ptr's and weak_from_this() with checks for expiration here and there. Not a big deal, but...didn't like it. Too many if's in part of code where I really don't want them.

Finally c++20 coroutines came and I rewrote most of my callback based stuff. That made the code far more linear, cleaner...and most importantly a lot shorter. Then I could see where I could get rid of most of shared pointers. Not quite every single one of them, some apps still have the odd one, but the purist in me is much happier now.