[badsectoracula]

> Yes, just use and IDE

The best the IDE can do is display a tooltip or something like that which is cumbersome when reading the code because you need to move over everything to figure out what the types are. And sometimes for whatever reason even that fails.

And this is only useful in the context of using an IDE: code can be found outside IDEs too, even if all you do is use an IDE for your development (not everyone does), the code can still be found in patch files, pull requests and code review platforms none of which have any IDE functionality to know what the types are.

> There’s no reason to repeat type definitions. If you can use auto, what that means is the type is already statically known

I'm not a compiler though.

[preg_match]

Many IDEs I’ve seen include the type in-line. No tooltip or anything.

I’ve also never seen that fail, because again, C++ is statically typed. When you say “auto” you’re not saying “any type”. No, it has a type, and the compiler has to know it, otherwise auto doesn’t work.

As for patches and whatnot, I still don’t think it matters. CI/CD will catch it 100% of the time because C++ is statically typed. If you want to read a patch in PLAINTEXT in an email or some bullshit, then whatever. I think nobody is actually doing that because they at least want syntax highlighting, no? So we’re right back at IDE.