Comment by pjmlp
5 hours ago
I have been saying that C++23, or maybe C++26 due to reflection, will eventually be the last standard that actually matters.
For a large number of C++ users, it boils down to what it offers beyond C, but not to the extent WG21 is driving it since C++20.
Also the major surviving three compilers have lost wind on their sails as the corporations sponsoring their development have switched focus to other compiled languages.
Other than the whole security debate, there are no features that would make C++ significantly better for LLVM, GCC, CLR, V8, CUDA,.. improvements.
In fact, some of those projects still require C++17.
If this sounds strange, how many care nowadays about ISO Fortran 2023, or ISO COBOL 2023, despite the amount of software written in them powering many busisesses, or Python libraries even, e.g. SciPy.
Or even with C, almost 20 years later many still reach out to C99, ignoring everything else.
Not to take away from your points; SciPy is now Fortran-free completely[0] (we are also requiring C++17 at most). NumPy never had it. BLAS is all C/Assembly in all optimized vendors. For LAPACK we are working on it [1].
Once there is enough pain, none of the talking points matter for any language. They don't and can't die but linger. I fear that time for C family might come in a decade which would be a shame given how magical Cpp compilers are, all that effort folks pouring in.
[0]: https://github.com/scipy/scipy/issues/18566 [1]: https://github.com/ilayn/semicolon-lapack
Thanks for the update overview, and interestingly you also mention C++17, as the version you currently care about.