[sytelus]

Code generators and schema files are not a good feature, IMO. One shouldn't have to duplicate everything in yet another "neutral" language and then maintain two copies of definitions.

The header-only libraries are good. Less dependency is good. No need for build system is good. Many of the existing solutions you mentioned have tons of dependencies. When code needs to be built reliably on 3 different OS and interfaced with arcane twisted build systems, dependencies become nightmare. Boost is great overall but I rather avoid this monster if I can.

[CamouflagedKiwi]

You're using them wrong if you duplicate everything and maintain two copies. You should have one copy of the objects in the "neutral" language (protobuf or whatever) and compile the language-specific files out of that - but you don't maintain those any more than you maintain any other build output.

[je42]

Code generators are good - if they are properly supported and tooling good. Have a look at the new work-in-progress about C++ meta classes (P0707): https://youtu.be/80BZxujhY38?t=3141 this stuff looks very neat.