[codehog]

> The proper answer is to not shoot yourself in the foot.

That's a bit like shrugging your shoulders when an infant walks off a precipice and saying the proper solution is for the infant not to walk off the precipice. The proper solution is actually either to put up a rail, making the precipice safer, or keep the infant away from the precipice in the first place (or rather, to hold the infant by the hand whilst showing them the safe way to approach the edge so that they can go solo when ready).

Or to stick with the poor analogy, the reason people used to shoot themselves in the foot is because old guns could easily go off in the holster. The answer was the safety catch.

Back on topic, the only reason this is not done with C++ is because people have come to rely on the ability to shoot from the holster (often avoiding their foot) and the back compatibility dictates that the ability must therefore remain. There are plenty of features that would not have been designed that way if C++14 had come into the world fully formed without evolving via its ancestors. It's also one reason people keep inventing new languages - it's an opportunity to learn from past mistakes with a clean slate, not just to bring in concepts that simply don't fit.

I would argue that there is scope for picking a 'major version' of C++ and consciously breaking back-compatibility in some areas. It's controversial, because it would require a lot of work in some existing C++ projects if they wish to benefit from any new language features beyond that point. Just look at the hooha made around Python 3.