Stroustrup's talk on C++0x

[Bill Baxter]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Sean Kelly wrote:
>> It actually has to be finished by year end 2008, and they have 
>> committed to getting the standard done on time even if it means 
>> dropping features.  In fact, last I heard, a few features were indeed 
>> being dropped for lack of time, but I can't recall what they were.  I 
>> haven't been keeping that close an eye on the C++ standardization 
>> process recently, aside from the new memory model and atomic features.
> 
> C++0x started out with the stated purpose of just a few core language 
> tweaks, and a bunch of new libraries. Sometime in the last couple of 
> years, that was abandoned wholesale and a big raft of complex new 
> features were proposed.
> 
> I think it's the success of D that lit the fire.

It probably gave them a nudge, but on the other hand, as is abundantly 
clear here on this newsgroup, everybody has a favorite feature.  So if 
you throw a bunch of engineers and language designers into a room, the 
natural tendency is towards trying to add everything and the kitchen 
sink.  But I agree that the fact that D is out there (and probably C#, 
Python, and Ruby, too) undoubtedly influenced people's votes when it 
came time to decide whether it was more important to have feature X or 
get the revision out sooner.

It is pretty scary, though, to hear Stroustrup saying that the C++ text 
books will need to become thicker than they already are, which was 
already about 3x as big as K&R's original book on C.

The one feature (or lack thereof) that surprises me about C++0x is 
nested functions.  They're one of my favorite things about D, but they 
don't seem to be a part of C++0x.  There can't be any fundamental reason 
for it, since I've heard g++ supports them.  Maybe lambdas will serve 
that purpose?

As for standards vs standards-compliant compilers, note that MS still 
hasn't made a C99 compiler, 8 years after the standard.  And 
implementing *that* standard looks like an undergrad homework assignment 
compared to what compiler writers will have to go through for C++0x.

--bb