C++ 2017

Wahooo!!! C++ 17 has now been published as an ISO standard!!

I haven't used C++ for a long time as C# is my daily driver these days. But I will always remember when I moved from C++ to C#, being so much more productive as the language was a more safer environment and there was less things you had to worry about.

However, I always try to keep up-to-date with news over in the C++ camp. The C++ language will always have a special place in my heart and I have plenty of war stories and battle scars!. Yes, C++ is an overly complicated language with years of baggage but with every new feature that is added there is less and less sharp bits to impale yourself on.

The only thing I would like the standards committee to do is actually remove old/legacy features from the language. And maybe provide a compiler switch to enable them for backwards compatibility. This would mean you have to opt-in to use those legacy features. Unfortunately I don't think this will ever happen.

Of course, there was a time when C++ languished but that all changed in 2011 with C++11. It added so many features to the language like lambdas and auto, unique pointer and shared pointer that it changed the way you code. For example, now, when coding C++ they say if you're writing "new" or "delete" you're doing it wrong! Instead you should be using make_shared() or make_unique() which means you don't have to worry about memory leaks (as much).

C++ 20

What piqued my interest is what is coming down the pipe for C++20 and beyond. Big things are brewing in the C++ world and C++ 20 is where all the big action is. It's 3 years away but it promises:

• Metaclasses (built on top of reflection)
• Concepts (which allows you to query types)
• Modules (to fix the #include system)
• Ranges
• Co-routines (async / await)

Okay, so I kinda snuck metaclasses in that list. It might be a little too early for them to make the cut for C++20. But a guy can dream can't he?

The biggest problem I have with C++ at the moment is the #include header system. It's soo old and antiquated. Coming from Java or C# where they have a module system the #include system is painful. But hopefully C++20 will fix that with it's new module system (And then maybe we can get an official package manager).

C++ Core Guidelines

However, the thing about C++ is it's as "old as god's dog" which means when searching on the internet, you need to make sure you are reading about the latest stuff. While there maybe less sharp pointy bits, for the most-part the old stuff is still there and you need to know what to avoid!

You don’t want to be reading old out-of-date information. Thankfully the C++ guys (Bjarne & Herb) are working on the C++ Core Guidelines. Apparently, these Guidelines are a "set of rules designed to help you write modern, safe C++ – saving you time and effort as well as making your code more reliable." Microsoft even have a nuget package add-in for Visual Studio that performs code analysis to check your code for compliance!

Wrapping Up

In a world where we have modern, new and shiny languages like Rust, Swift & Kotlin you'd be forgiven for thinking there is no place for C++. That it's time to retire the old dog and put her out to pasture (tounge == in-cheek). Of course, we know that's not the case when we are talking about a language as important as C++. It's just good to see that C++ is alive and well and I am watching with interest to see how the language continues to evolve.