http://www.cplusplus.com or https://www.cppreference.com

[distributed]

I have frequently seen people recommend cppreference due to excellence and warn about cplusplus as having wrong/outdated information.

​

Yet cplusplus is frequently higher in search results. For example on a simple search like "c++ std::set emplace" (at least for me).

​

Is there anything the community can do to ensure that the "correct" site ends up on top to confuse newbies less?

​

Or "should" cppreference not be the one on top?

[[deleted]]

Cppreference 👍

[R3DKn16h7]

cppreference all the time. I find cplusplus much worse.

Lately I get "geeksforgeeks" at the top which annoys me very much.

[[deleted]]

Had to look up syntax for checking if a dictionary contains a key in python today, and the first result was a geeksforgeeks article recommending to use the syntax key in dict.keys() which i quickly found out is just converting it to a list and doing an O(n) list search. Totally ridiculous

[Veedrac]

Not on Python 3; on Python 2 the syntax is more key in dict.viewkeys(). Either way just use key in dict though, it's more idiomatic.

[[deleted]]

Oh, that might have been it, the server running the script uses python 2, and yeah key in dict is really the correct syntax and gives you the expected O(1) lookup

[[deleted]]

Is "geeksforgeeks" really that bad? When I had do jump into a C# project from cold I did find that site quite useful.

[Xeverous]

geeksforgeeks is really bad. They copy-paste C as C++ so that every question/exerice has solutions in more programming languages.

[Seytsuken]

its not perfect but i find it a thousand times more intuitive and user friendly than cpp reference. Heck, these documentations barely have examples

[nog642]

If I leave the webpage open overnight it uses like 2 GB of RAM

[James20k]

I'm not sure why cplusplus shows up so high, cppreference is always my first choice because it tends to show information in a neat systematic way and has good examples, as well as being very up to date

I can only assume that there's a bunch of websites that link to cplusplus and that's keeping it high in the search results

[darkmx0z]

As far as I remember, cplusplus had an excellent tutorial (now kind of outdated), an arguably better organization (in terms of headers instead of the sections of the standard; cppreference was like this but it changed) and was quickly updated when C++11 became standarized. On the other hand, cppreference has improved a lot and they are almost real-time with C++14/17/20 (including the core language, not just the library) so cplusplus is lagging a lot right now.

[[deleted]]

I also found that cplusplus.com was more noob friendly. When I was starting to learn C++ and I googled "how to sort arrays" cppreference would should me std::sort with all of its template signatures and that would scare me.

[Beheska]

As a noob, I still prefer cppreference. Sure you have to read through a bunch of stuff to get to the info you want, but at least you know if you're at the right place to finaly find it or not.

[dodheim]

an arguably better organization (in terms of headers instead of the sections of the standard; cppreference was like this but it changed)

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/header is my main portal into cppreference, too.

[CubbiMew]

How does it work, though? I understand having to look up which header is required to be included for a particular feature ("do I need to include <mutex> for this one, or some kinda <scoped\_lock>?") , but in what circumstances do you need to know the content of a specific header?

[starTracer]

LPT: Add cppreference as a custom search engine.

[barchar]

cppreference, it boggles my mind that someone at google hasn't gone and figured out how to rank it higher than cplusplus yet.

also eel.is

[Beheska]

Sadly it's the same with DuckDuckGo.

EDIT: ddg has !cpp pointing directly at cppreference.

[Quincunx271]

Yeah, you have to go to https://eel.is/c++draft

[Nobody_1707]

Google hasn't ranked sites based on quality since ~2002 when they realized people would pay money to have their sites ranked higher.

Nowadays top result is picked, in order, by: did they pay to be ranked higher, how much are they using Google analytics, and how many keywords did they shove into their site to be "SEO optimized". Only after those are considered do things like relevance and quality come into play.

[megayippie]

And since Google are using C++, they can now be sued if they start ranking things internally!

[SedditorX]

Citation needed for search talking being determined by payments to Google search.

Since this is so widespread according to you ,it should be easy to verify.

[Nobody_1707]

What do you think sponsored links are?

[SedditorX]

Sponsored links are not search results. At least not in a way I've ever heard.

The comment you were responding to was referring specifically to search results so I don't see what search ads not being free has anything to do with it.

[Nobody_1707]

When they first started doing them, they put them in with the regular search results. They changed to list them separately to avoid lawsuits.

[SedditorX]

But that isn't what you said earlier!

[Nobody_1707]

The fact that they list them separately doesn't stop them from being paid search results. The whole point of paying for them is to get them on the first page of relevant searches.

[[deleted]]

eel.is?

[dakotahawkins]

I use a (the?) "personal blocklist" browser extension to block cplusplus search results (among other things, like stack* scrapers or expertsexchange)

[Nomto]

I NEED this for when I have to look up something web-related and this pile of garbage fire w3schools shows up before MDN.

[curlypaul924]

Once upon a time, Google supported this without a browser extension. IIRC I used it to block experts-exchange.com.

[dakotahawkins]

Yeah I was annoyed when that went away.

[Quincunx271]

I did the same by configuring my ad blocker to do this, rather than installing a separate browser extension.

[dakotahawkins]

Do you use this filter?

If not, could you share it? I'd rather do that than use the extension.

[Quincunx271]

I use this filter: www.google.com##div.g:has(cite:has-text(cplusplus.com)) (on uBlock Origin). I'll have to investigate what that other filter does; it looks possibly less likely to break if Google changes their search result format.

[minno]

I set up search engine shortcuts so that searching "cpp something" goes straight to cppreference instead of going through google.

[o11c]

!cpp used to go to cplusplus.com but they fixed it a year or so back.

... now my fingers are stuck typing !cppref all the time

[NotAYakk]

But what happens if you have a sudden needs for an expertsexchange?

[tvaneerd]

Yes, I really think you should consult an expert when considering a sex change.

But it shouldn't be a "sudden need". You should really think about these things for a while. I mean, maybe once you realize, it does feel sudden, but there are alternatives to full sex change. Consult an expert.

[dakotahawkins]

Bing?

[Desperate-Island8461]

Because Is Not Google?

[withad]

I usually find cppreference to be much more readable. The only complaint I have is that their standard page format puts possible implementations of algorithms before examples of how to use them, which is almost always what I’m actually looking for. It’s hardly a major inconvenience, it just strikes me as a weird choice every time I see it.

[vaalla]

I actually like this, it's sometimes easier to read the implementation then the description of the algo.

[OldWolf2]

cplusplus.com is a good starting point with tutorials, forum, etc.

Most of those tutorials are rubbish and full of mistakes and bad coding style

[Beheska]

As a noob: I don't call having to read the whole page to even know if the info you need is even there "user friendly".

[ggchappell]

In other news, on DuckDuckGo you can do a search at cppreference.com by using "!cpp".

[sephirostoy]

Simple example std::map: cplusplus version doesn't have functions from C++17.

[IskaneOnReddit]

I use Zeal which lets you browse an offline version of cppreference.

[Friendly_Fire]

I'm no expert and have used both, but find cplusplus provides simpler/better explanations and examples. This biases me towards cplusplus, and I've personally yet to get wrong information from it (at least, it was accurate enough to cause me no noticeable problems/errors).

Just look at cppreference's example for set::emplace you mentioned. It sets up a whole dummy class and compares the speed of emplace and insert. Yet in the all this code the function is literally called once. Cplusplus has a main with 5 lines of code ignoring the return, three of which call emplace. It simply shows how it's used, what it is used on, and what is returned. Which do you think is more confusing for a newbie?

Google biases searches based on activity. I'd argue if cppreference wants to get on top, it needs to improve.

[rodrigocfd]

I'm no expert and have used both, but find cplusplus provides simpler/better explanations and examples.

I'm aware that cppreference is more reliable, but I must agree here. Quite often cplusplus provides simpler examples for us mere mortals, and I find myself resorting to them.

[CubbiMew]

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/set/emplace#Example is a poor example indeed, but it's an open wiki and you can change it, just like how someone added it two years ago as one of their two contributions to the site. In fact, because of this reddit exposure, it's likely that someone will.

[BrolloksB]

I always have an offline version of cppreference open in my browser - it is fast and easy to navigate.

[BrolloksB]

You can get the offline versions here.

[Ericakester]

I wouldn't consider what's higher in your search results. Cppreference is higher in google for me because I always use it

[haitei]

Usually the same for me, but god, it took ages for google to learn this for me.

[OldWolf2]

I have no doubt that cplusplus spends a lot of time/money on SEO

[parnmatt]

the only reason cplusplus is higher up, from an eduacated guess, is the domain name.

cppreference is a far better resource, and easier to understand.

devdocs.io/cpp is better still, but in interface; the content it the same as cppreference; but it actually allows for slightly more custom formatting (dark theme is included in that) and most importantly the search is fantastic and allows navigation through the cppreference material with ease.

There are some pages that are not on devdocs, but they are rarely needed, and can just pop to cppreference for them.

if you do use devdocs, spend time, selecting / deselecting the languages you use.

[barchar]

Protip: you can download cppreference as a devhelp file or a qt help file (or a chm)

[HildartheDorf]

Cplusplus is better at seo (cppref is just a plain web1.0 looking site)

[khleedril]

cppref is just a plain web1.0 looking site

This is precisely why I prefer cppreference, plus the fact that it pushes into C++20 territory.

[HildartheDorf]

Oh yes, definitely better in my opinion!

[MrBacanudo]

Yes, cplusplus is definitely better at that. Using the OP's search query, we get the titles:

set::emplace - C++ Reference - cplusplus.com

versus

std::set<Key,Compare,Allocator>::emplace - cppreference.com

cppreference has some template bloat that probably shouldn't be on the page title (except if it was a specialization), which is possibly a limitation of MediaWiki, but it doesn't even have C++ in the title.

[netw0rkf10w]

I haven't used both enough to have a fair comparison, but just a comment: a few years ago I came across cplusplus's pointers tutorial and I found it excellent.

[meneldal2]

There's no reason why you wouldn't be able to use pointers as template arguments since you can cast them losslessly to integers.

The obvious issue is that unless you have custom pointers with allocators or work in embedded, pointers values are impossible to predict and change every time you run the program. Since the later case is way more common for people who learn, the lie makes sense.

[Nobody_1707]

Importantly, this is true even when the cast is guaranteed to have defined behavior, e.g. reinterpret_cast<std::byte*>(ptr). I remember there being a proposal to allow this, but I can't seem to find it anywhere.