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amluto • today at 5:07 AM • 3 replies • view on HN

I maintain a codebase that I’ve migrated from C++98 to C++11 and all the way to C++23 and even a bit of draft 26 (the latter for some minor library improvements). Few things made me quite as happy as moving from using SFINAE to using requires clauses and concepts.

(IMO the single best improvements over the years have been atomics and maybe variadic templates.)

Replies

jandrewrogers • today at 5:16 AM

I think you are right to position atomics and variadic templates as among the most consequential features of C++ in the last couple decades. It made an enormous number of things possible.

One thing I give the C++ feature gods credit for is recognizing material deficiencies in systems languages and unapologetically trying to fill those gaps starting with C++11. The addition of atomics, strict variadics, constexpr, lambdas, concepts, lifetime annotations, etc has been transformative for C++.

throwaway2037 • today at 7:49 AM

    > the single best improvements over the years have been atomics...
Of course, libatomic and friends have existed for a long time. Real question: Do you feel that the standardisation of atomics within the C++ base library is a material advantage over using libatomic? Also, maybe there are atomic APIs in the C++ base library that are better than libatomic. If so, please kindly share an example or two. I would like to learn more.

EDIT

I forgot to give a hat tip to your big upgrade from C++98 to C++23. In some projects, that can require an enormous amount of effort! Can you share a "stories from the trenches" that were difficult in that upgrade?

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Shorel • today at 8:16 AM

I want to read your blog describing these experiences.