People are going to build plugin and component systems whether we like it or not. People have massive investments in C++ whether we like it or not. These two concerns often intersect in game engines, apologies if that felt off topic.
Nah! I agree that plugin/component systems will be built out, no matter the language, more just trying to point out that C++, as-is-designed, in my opinion, seems like they're trying to go that route without actually going that route :|
I'm more saying we should cut out the middle-man (as it were).
The difference between C++03 and C++26 is, at a language/STL level, ultimately negligible when it comes to what I can "really do" with the language if I started in 03 .. and I don't mean that 26 doesn't "add more", but if I started with 03 and didn't have threading, file handling, delegates (std::function), sockets, graphics, and so much more, I'd likely use something that wrapped all of that (a plugin/component system) ... and switching away from that with an "antiquated" code base would be really hard at this point. Using 03 with a library and then just making it compile with C++26 doesn't really "add much", and switching away from that component system to C++26 requires design, building, testing, etc. etc. :|
And even if I'm starting with C++26 now (assuming my compilers are actually compliant, stable, non-breaking, ABI resilient and/or are actually available across the various platforms I want to target), while it does give me a lot more of a feature-set, how much of that is actually viable from an efficiency (CPU/memory) perspective over just proper/decent C++03/11 (I say 11 because of the threads) ...??
I know it's also up to the individual programmer using C++ to actually "do it good", so it's more just an old-man-yelling-at-clouds rant (observation) at how C++ is evolving, lol!
To be clear: not trying to be argumentative, I regularly work in C++ and enjoy it over many other languages .. just "saying" is all, hehe :)
Gotcha, totally fair points. It is an inherently conservative approach to standards, to take workarounds and pragmatic solutions that are already available within the community, and provide slightly cleaner (perhaps debatable) baked-in versions. You're right it doesn't add much, but at the same time... I feel the ick factor reducing with each release and my enjoyment of the language has grown over the years. I would certainly love to see those features used in common libraries and frameworks, but for practical reasons I suspect they think the same way you do, which is entirely valid.
