Stroustrup's talk on C++0x

[0ffh]

eao197 wrote:
> On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:44:25 +0400, 0ffh <spam at frankhirsch.net> wrote:
>> I rather think, that a "new major version" of any language that "doesn't
>> break existing code" could hardly justify it's new major version number.
>> A complete rewrite of the compiler, e.g., would justify a majer new
>> compiler version, but not even a teeny-minor new language version.
> Java 1.5 (with generics) and C# 2.0 ware major versions, but didn't 
> break old code.

Well, yeah, maybe (apart from what Jari-Matti said about Java 1.5 breaking
code). But anyways, adding something to a language without breaking old
code does only work so often. C++ tried to add to C without breaking code
(it still does, but it tried) and you can see what came from it.
New language features tend to need new syntax. If you want to remain
compatible, you'll have to find a way to introduce that new syntax without
breaking the old ones. This is usually quite hard to achieve without
making the new syntax either cumbersome or fragile and hard to grok.

Regards, Frank