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> How many dialects of C++ are there Dozens. The standard language has been through numerous revisions (C++ 2.0, 98, 03, 11, 14, 17, 23), with no doubt many more to come - each version is a dialect. And there have been dozens of compilers, all of which define extensions to the standard - some of those extensions are copied by other compilers (and may eventually end up in the standard), others are unique to that implementation - so each compiler (even each of its successive major releases) can be viewed as a dialect. And then there are dialects defined, not by the core language features, but by which features are used, by which external libraries are used, etc. One C++ programmer is addicted to esoteric template metaprogramming, another avoids templates and treats C++ as a slightly improved version of C. One C++ programmer uses every Boost library they possibly can, another refuses to use any third party dependencies. One uses exceptions and RTTI heavily, the other always turns them off. Aren’t those all effectively different dialects, even if they are both using the exact same version of the same tools? And then there are entire languages defined as extensions of C++, such as Apple’s Objective C++, or Microsoft’s Managed Extensions for C++ and then C++/CLI and C++/CX - and also more modest extensions such as OpenMP Considering C++ is an object-oriented extension to C, it belongs alongside other such extensions - most notably Objective C and D (and even, to a lesser degree, Java and C#) - and there have been other attempts at that which weren’t successful - aren’t they all (in a sense) C dialects? |