Thoughts on C++14

published at 19.08.2014 14:26 by Jens Weller
Save to Instapaper Pocket

Yesterday we could read on isocpp.org that C++14 has been approved and will now become a valid ISO Standard. Great news for everyone in the C++ land! While C++14 brings no big change like concepts or modules, its bringing some important new core features to C++, such as make_unique, cbegin/cend and improvements for lambdas and constexpr. I'm a bit sad that std::optional didn't make it.

But I already have written about C++14 and Michael Wong gave an excellent talk about C++14 features at C++Now this year. I've also recorded an interview on C++14, the C++ Standard and other things with him. So, not much new to say about C++14. But there is something else that makes C++14 for me special.

Thoughts on C++14

When I look back into 2011, when C++11 was released. Just 3 years ago, in those 3 years a lot of things have changed for C++. Clang has become the 3rd big compiler for C++, GCC also managed to get full C++11 support on par with clang. Visual Studio is still on its way, but also today supports the most important features of C++11 and has already started to adopt to C++14 too. So while we had in 2011 still to wait for a conformant compiler, with C++14 Clang and GCC are already with most or even all features supported available.

In the last 3 years the C++ Committee has been very active, not only for C++14, but also in preparing the next Standard C++17 (most likely). The window for this next standard could close next year, as already there are a lot of Technical Specification available for C++17 then. I've blogged earlier this year about the status of C++ after C++14.

What also has changed is the community, there are now a lot of active blogs about C++11 and C++14, a lot of new C++ Conferences or Tracks have came up in the event field. We even have now CppCon, I'm looking forward to meet with so many friends again there and meet a lot of new people. And if I look back into 2011, when I started my own user group in Düsseldorf: except in Oslo there wasn't really any activity with user groups for C++ in Europe. This has changed a lot now, every dot on this map is more or less one User Group:

This is a big personal success, as with the last two years of running Meeting C++, I could motivate a lot of new user groups in Europe, but I also see that we still got some space in Europe left...

... so after all this is not just the release of a new standard after C++11. It also shows how active and alive C++ still is. Its most likely just 3 more years till we can see what the next C++ standard will bring for us!

Join the Meeting C++ patreon community!
This and other posts on Meeting C++ are enabled by my supporters on patreon!