On Thu, 16 Apr 2026 at 09:28, Jan Schultke <janschultke@googlemail.com> wrote:
On Thu, 16 Apr 2026, 05:20 Jan Schultke via Std-Proposals, <std-proposals@lists.isocpp.org> wrote:

tl; dr unsigned integers suck, but the train for fixing the problem has left the station

This is a very silly statement. Unsigned integers do not suck, they are extremely valuable and important. When used appropriately. When you want modular arithmetic, or a collection of bits, you want to use unsigned integers.

But when you want an integer that should not be negative, the useful properties of unsigned integer types are not appropriate.

It doesn't help anybody to make sweeping over-general statements that they "suck".

Yeah, the tl; dr is poorly phrased. To be clear, they are useful, and I use them all the time for things like bit manipulation and multiprecision; they just suck when used for the purpose of expressing preconditions/postconditions on functions because the negative consequences from doing so outweigh the benefits.

+1