What you C++ is what you get

This year, more than ever, C++ is coming closer and closer to hitting a major upgrade as a “standard programming language”. It's the next big take on this language – the upcoming and so-called C++0x, a new ISO standard. The first C++ standard was released in 1998, as far as I know, and another tiny revision in 2003, that is after 5 years. But that one was so small it can barely be called a “revision”. C++0x, on the other hand, will make for a real revision and will add up many polished features to the language (threads, regexes, hash tables, tuples, the auto type, a new for-loop, lambdas, delegation, variadic templates – just to name a few). Great things and great work on this side of the page.

But – because there is a big but – C++ deserves more. More is less, someone once told me. And in this case, it may need less. C++ is a big and complex language, it is a “cathedral” prisoner struggling to escape into the world and experience with everything the “bazaar” has to offer. A first-class prisoner at that. Way too many features are being discussed and debated and standardized, and yet the removal of obsolete or simply bad features is kind of left aside. IMO these are the bugs that C++ as a solid language has, and that won't be fixed too soon, if ever:

• The whole idea of C as a strict subset of C++, along with the famous idea of maintaining backward compatibility with millions and millions of lines of C code, are both counter-evolutionary and will cause static software at any time. Existing code must change if it needs or wants to evolve. Languages should encourage software (existing and future) to change for the better. The post-increment operator in its name should mean more than “superset” and “object-oriented”.
• C++ must have a general cleanup of its features. It could generalize many useful ideas from the STL in other parts of the language. It can have the STL simplified a lot.
• Do we still need char * ? Moreover, do we still need C pointers at all? Do we need all the iterators in order to pass through a mere collection? Do we need all the maps and multimaps and sets and multisets and hashes and so on, when we could have one good hash? Do we need templates, when some auto type could do it? Do we need all the stacks, queues, deques, when a proper vector would suffice?
• Maybe the best way to advance is not making simple things complicated; and just maybe C++ can learn some new and good things from interpreted languages as PHP, Python and Ruby.
• Maybe the ISO standardization and voting process are not that suited for such a language. C++ can learn a lot from open source and from the evolution of languages similar to those mentioned above. Release early, release often, community support, simplicity, continuous development, are facts that can be borrowed successfully from software development to actual language construction.

Who hasn't heard of C or C++? It has inspired and influenced many other languages, and has helped in building a lot of them. At this moment, C++ can too learn and pull good things and best practices from others. In breaking the excessive backward compatibility with C and with itself, it can have a glimpse at the way PHP handled this when passing to version 5 from 4. Also, Python stepping up to a revamped version 3 is a living example.

The Web has shown us more than anything else that software is ever-changing. C++ should and is able to keep the pace in the most intelligent manner.