I delivered a keynote, C++ and the Next 30 Years, at the 2024 CPP-Summit conference in Beijing, China. Experiencing the culture, the people, and the landscape was tremendous. In this post I’ll cover some of the points in my future-looking C++ talk and share my experience giving a talk for the first time in China.

C++ and The Next 30 Years

by David Sankel

From the article:

My talk: C++ and the Next 30 Years

The title of my keynote was C++ and the Next 30 Years which covered C++’s evolution, the changing landscape of programming languages, and the influence of AI. Here I break down some of my talk’s key points.

The next 10 years

In the next 10 years I expect C++ modules to become more accessible. Most C++ vendors have at least some support and CMake recently announced its feature set. However, transitioning existing code bases and, in many instances, bespoke build systems will be a great obstacle.

Package manager usage is on the rise, but the growth curve is slow. I don’t expect any tool to capture more than 40% market share by the decade’s end.