from Hacker News

Why the C++ standard ships every three years

by frostmatthew on 7/13/19, 4:04 PM with 220 comments

  • by Rexxar on 7/13/19, 6:27 PM

    The 1998-2011 gap has made a lot of damage to c++ in term of "market share". I think it's necessary to avoid something similar happen again.
  • by cousin_it on 7/13/19, 7:06 PM

    This sounds like a great idea, can't believe I didn't see it earlier. Maybe I should adopt it for my personal projects (software, music, etc): pick a regular release schedule and stick to it, even if it means releasing less feature-rich stuff. Does anyone have experience with this approach?
  • by freyr on 7/13/19, 7:14 PM

    Considering that C++ has evolved a lot over the years (and grown quite large), what are good resources for a programmer to get started with the language in 2019?

    I've heard Accelerated C++ is a good introduction, but it's quite old at this point. Would Accelerated C++ followed by Effective Modern C++ bring someone up to speed with modern C++? Is there a single book or online resource that would service this purpose better?

  • by corysama on 7/14/19, 12:27 AM

    I’m sure the committee has thought about this 1000x as much as me. But, I wish they would go further and release every year. IMHO, that would relieve most of the pressure to push out features that aren’t fully baked. 3 more years is a long time to wait if you’ve already been working on something for several years. 1 more year, when you know you could use “maybe a couple more months” (likely 8 in practice), not so bad.
  • by steveklabnik on 7/13/19, 6:53 PM

    I’m a huge fan of this strategy; we use it with Rust, for virtually identical reasons. Ruby also ships each Christmas.
  • by nayuki on 7/13/19, 5:46 PM

    This is similar to Java's transition from a feature-based release model to a time-based release model. The first rapid release was Java 10 in March 2018.
  • by hellofunk on 7/13/19, 10:16 PM

    So, in 2019, if you want the execution speed and efficiency of C++, high level features, without the complexity of C++ or rust, how about Nim??
  • by carlsborg on 7/13/19, 9:37 PM

    C++ needs to merge with Python to create the uber-language: Python for rapid development, and drop to C++ for performance. Like Cython, but with native integration.
  • by abductee_hg on 7/13/19, 9:29 PM

    as long as basic things like __alignment__ are still fundamentally broken I simply do not care about the syntax. (I mean it doesn't get anything more basic than this, no?)
  • by NTDF9 on 7/13/19, 6:50 PM

    Glad to have left C++ behind. I thank it for making me a better software engineer but I don't think I want to work with core dumps for the rest of my life.