[mannykannot]

Speaking as someone who has done a lot of C++ work with nothing more than Emacs, I don't think there is any particular value or virtue in using only the sort of tools that were available in the 80s. The problem of finding out exactly what sort of thing you are dealing with did not start with auto (the elements of expressions have never been labeled with their type), and I think better tools are the way to the solution. C++ is actually a good language for this, as as little as possible is left to be decided at runtime.

With regard to the hovering issue specifically, there can be a great deal of visual clutter from type names that is a hinderance to understanding most of the time; now you only have to see it when you need it. That is only the start, however; a decent IDE should, for example, make it easy to go from there to the declaration of the type, should you want to.