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Comment by olliej

7 years ago

You’re missing one of the major points in the post: making release cycles take a long time means that small features aren’t finalized for that long period either.

You seem to be thinking that the compiler devs wait until a release is done to start implementing a release, which is not what happens. Part of the big benefit of releasing every three years is that it makes continuous development actually possible: compiler devs have a better idea of how stable things are, and so which things aren’t going to need to be completely reimplement in another 3 years.

I do not understand where you get a “catch their breath” mentality - none of the modern c++ compilers have a three year cadence, most run with approximately annual major releases.

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olliej

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mehrdadn  7 years ago

No... there's more to programming than just having a shiny new compiler. VS2017 for example had problems that held me back at VS2015, so I couldn't upgrade until I got to VS2019, but meanwhile projects moved on. The 1-year period you're imagining was really a ~4-year period where the language syntax had changed, the stdlib had changed, and projects had moved on, so I couldn't even compile things. Heck, I couldn't even read the language anymore, let alone worry about all the new stuff in stdlib.

And it's not like they've been only adding small features every 3 years. If they were then my position would be different too. But small features being small, people can live without them. Not having them is a lot better than not being able to use the language at all.