Reflection voted into C++26: "Whole new language" -- Herb Sutter

By Blog Staff | Jun 21, 2025 10:15 PM | Tags: None

The first trip report from the Sofia meeting is available:

Trip report: June 2025 ISO C++ standards meeting (Sofia, Bulgaria)

by Herb Sutter

From the article:

A unique milestone: “Whole new language”

Today marks a turning point in C++: A few minutes ago, the C++ committee voted the first seven (7) papers for compile-time reflection into draft C++26 to several sustained rounds of applause in the room. I think Hana “Ms. Constexpr” Dusíková summarized the impact of this feature best a few days ago, in her calm deadpan way… when she was told that the reflection paper was going to make it to the Saturday adoption poll, she gave a little shrug and just quietly said: “Whole new language.”

Mic drop.

Results summary: 2025 Annual C++ Developer Survey "Lite"

By Blog Staff | May 19, 2025 01:00 AM | Tags: None

Thank you to everyone who reponded to our 2025 annual global C++ developer survey. As promised, here is a summary of the results, including one-page AI-generated summaries of your answers to the free-form questions:

CppDevSurvey-2025-summary.pdf

A 100-page version of this report that also includes all individual write-in responses has now been forwarded to the C++ standards committee and C++ product vendors, to help inform C++ evolution and tooling.

Your feedback is valuable, and appreciated.

Survey closing soon: 2025 Annual C++ Developer Survey "Lite"

By Blog Staff | May 7, 2025 02:58 AM | Tags: None

If you haven't already, please take 10 minutes to participate in this year's annual C++ developer survey! The results help to inform C++ standardization and C++ product vendors.

2025 Annual C++ Developer Survey "Lite"

The survey closes on Friday.

Thank you for participating and helping to inform our committee and community!

2025 Annual C++ Developer Survey "Lite"

By Blog Staff | Apr 30, 2025 04:11 PM | Tags: None

The annual global C++ developer survey is now open. As the name suggests, it's short:

2025 Annual C++ Developer Survey "Lite"

Please take 10 minutes or so to participate! A summary of the results, including aggregated highlights of common answers in the write-in responses, will be posted publicly here on isocpp.org and shared with the C++ standardization committee participants to help inform C++ evolution.

The survey closes in one week.

Thank you for participating and helping to inform our committee and community!

2025-03 Mailing Available

By Administrator | Mar 21, 2025 01:44 PM | Tags: None

The 2025-03 mailing of new standards papers is now available.

21st Century C++ -- Bjarne Stroustrup

By Bjarne Stroustrup | Feb 10, 2025 12:18 PM | Tags: None

It is now 45+ years since C++ was first conceived. As planned, it evolved to meet challenges, but many developers use C++ as if it was still the previous millennium. This is suboptimal from the perspective of ease of expressing ideas, performance, reliability, and maintainability.

21st Century C++

by Bjarne Stroustrup

About the article:

Here, I present the key concepts on which performant, type safe, and flexible C++ software can be built: resource management, life-time management, error-handling, modularity, and generic programming. At the end, I present ways to ensure that code is contemporary, rather than relying on outdated, unsafe, and hard-to-maintain techniques: guidelines and profiles.

Contracts for C++ explained in 5 minutes -- Timur Doumler

By Timur Doumler | Feb 10, 2025 12:05 PM | Tags: None

In this article, we briefly explain everything you need to know to get started with Contracts as proposed for C++26 in P2900.

Contracts for C++ explained in 5 minutes

by Timur Doumler

From the article:

With P2900, we propose to add contract assertions to the C++ language. This proposal is in the final stages of wording review before being included in the draft Standard for C++26.

It has been suggested by some members of the C++ standard committee that this feature is too large, too complicated, and hard to teach. As it turns out, the opposite is true: contract assertions are actually very simple and can be explained in just five minutes. In this blog post, we will do exactly this!

2025-01 Mailing Available

By Administrator | Jan 13, 2025 04:52 PM | Tags: None

The 2025-01 mailing of new standards papers is now available.

2024-12 Mailing Available

By Administrator | Dec 17, 2024 04:50 PM | Tags: None

The 2024-12 mailing of new standards papers is now available.

Smart Pointers and the Pointer to Implementation Idiom -- Andreas Fertig

By Blog Staff | Oct 28, 2024 10:31 AM | Tags: None

A post I wrote back in 2023 When an empty destructor is required resulted in feedback that I'd like to address in today's post.

Smart Pointers and the Pointer to Implementation Idiom

by Andreas Fertig

From the article:

In the 2023 post, I briefly mentioned PImpl idiom. I did not intend to make it the theme of the post. However, I got various questions about PImpl and smart pointers.

The goal of PImpl is to hide implementation details from clients. Since you can declare a pointer of an unknown class, you can shift the entire implementation of such an anonymous class into a .cpp file. That way, no client can see any details. Another benefit is that changes to that .cpp file result in only minor recompiles. Maintaining the same in a header file would cause all .cpp files, including this header, to recompile. At least the speed-up part is since C++20's modules are no longer necessary. And as long as you don't want to hide classified implementation in the .cpp file modules, it also gives you the ability to mark constructs as private.