[tialaramex]

So far as I can see in 2026 the C++ programmers will be assuring us that (some feature from C++26) is going to fix all the awful clag in the C++23 programs which, in turn, offered (some feature from C++23, maybe it's a simpler exception mechanism) but alas instead created more clag, despite their promise to clear up the mess from C++20...

I am an old man, and so I remember when left and right every C++ programmer was excited about how the Standard Template Library was going to make everything OK and those of us who were still jeering would be writing C++ soon. How did that go?

[pjmlp]

I see it differently.

Many will keep hating C++, while ignoring that Java, .NET (C#, F#, VB, C++/CLI), Python, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby,.... all suffer from similar complexity, spread around 30 - 40 years of language evolution and ecosystems.

Others will cling to their outdated toolchains because the language owners played a Python 3 on them.

While some will understand that the world isn't perfect and make do with what is out there.

[tialaramex]

ISO C++ strongly resists simplification. It can grow. I have no doubt that every brilliant idea I see in programming languages can be added to C++ but the problem is that it can't shrink and so what happens instead is that mostly "C++ programmers" speak a dialect of C++ and those dialects become mutually incomprehensible, and so then what was the benefit of C++ as a language rather than just the abstract agreement that you could, in principle, graft every conceivable feature on to something that looks kinda like C?

An example is right in the name. Today we know that "clever" operators like the pair of ++ increment operators in C++ are a bad idea. They too easily allow mistakes to hide in plain sight, the programmer writes ++n where they actually needed n++ or vice versa, and a reviewer's brain overlooks this and so it gets shipped.

If you're playing Code Golf then these operators are a big benefit, but we aren't playing Code Golf, we're writing actual software that will be used in the real world, so explicitly spelling out what you meant is good.

As a result some modern languages deliberately do not have these operators. And e.g. as I understand it Swift actually removed these operators from the language. But C++ 20 still has both operators of course, it's just that your local dialect might forbid one or both of them.

[pjmlp]

Modern languages start from scratch.

Python 3 will stay in history as a canonical example of what happens when those wishes turn into reality.

[bluGill]

That is the way of everything in the world.