The Design of C++0x

C++0x will be almost 100-percent compatible with the existing Standard C++. … We aim for compatibility but realize that there may be cases where a large advantage is worth paying for by small incompatibilities.

C++’s emphasis on general features (notably classes) has been its main strength, and often its lack of specialized features (such as “properties” and threads0 has been seen as its main weakness. … Nevertheless, we must keep the focus on general features aimed at efficient abstraction; the huge diversity of the C++ community requires that. … The obvious areas where C++ could be improved for greater generality is through better support for generic programming and more flexible initialization/construction mechanisms. Is is also obvious that some support for concurrency is needed as many forms of concurrent, parallel, and distributed programming are becoming common.

You don’t want to become a language expert-you want to be (or become) an expert in your own field and know just enough of some programming language to get your work done.

C++0x will not be able to close all the loopholes in the C++ type system, but it will not introduce new holes and it will provide ways of avoiding inherently unsafe facilities-primarily through the Standard Library providing (compile-time or run-time) type-safe alternatives.

That is, the zero-overhead principle: “what you don’t use, you don’t pay for” and “what you use can be implemented without overhead compared with hand coding” is still the bedrock of C++.

A language cannot support everything, but conceivably, a large set of libraries could. … Library extensions will be preferred to language extensions.

The development of C++0x must be timely and to gain acceptance from vendors, new language features must be easier to implement that the most difficult C++98 features. … we dislike dialects. … My suggestion is for programmers to avoid nonstandard features whenever possible.

Whereas we’ll be cautious and skeptical about language extensions, we’ll be aggressive and opportunistic when in comes to new library-especially for libraries that extend the range of portable support for systems programming.