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by superkuh 1943 days ago
As a developer, when you decide to use bleeding edge C++?? extensions keep in mind that when you do so you're making it much, much harder to run any of your code on a distro more than 4 years old. Is it worth it?
2 comments

Similarly, as a user, keep in mind that when you use a 4 year old distro, it becomes much, much harder to run any software that has adopted new C++ features.
At least now. Back during the golden age of desktop from 2000 to about 2010 things were stable. But then dev funding for linux and it's primary libs went back to be about creating the most bleeding edge, fastest, possible environment for running server farms for mega-corps and desktop stability was abandoned.

The end result is the fever that is containerization as a symptom of the sickness that is future shock from devs always using the latest.

I can't find the article, but there was a rant a little while back that essentially panned C++ as veering into the "move fast and break things" mentality. Their recommendation was something to wait on the order of 7 years, where one should expect C++14 features to be generally solid and performant by now, but to treat everything else with caution. If you're supporting 4 year old distros, you might stick with C++11.