Comment by roca
7 years ago
New features can reduce the complexity of code, but they cannot reduce the complexity of the language.
C++ programmers still need to know what "new" and "delete" do, so they can work with older code that uses them. They also need to learn what "auto" does, so they can work with newer code that uses it. (The behavior of "auto" isn't trivial; how many C++ programmers understand the difference between "auto v = <expr>;" and "decltype(<expr>) v = <expr>;"?)
Why would you ever use or see the latter? Fabricated examples aren't helpful.
You wouldn't...
...instead you'd use "decltype(auto) v = <expr>", which is equivalent. And people certainly use decltype(auto), or else it wouldn't have been added to the language, 3 years after regular auto.
Not sure why this was downvoted, decltype was introduced with C++11 alongside of auto for declarations: the example given isn't accurate of reality. A better one might be a function returning auto vs returning decltype(some expression).
Which specific example is choosen doesn't seem all that relevant for the point of "there's these two similar but not identical things people have to/might not understand the difference of"
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