On 11/3/2012 5:24 PM, Paul Mensonides wrote:
On 11/3/2012 10:26 AM, Nathan Ridge wrote:
* Microsoft has released an out-of-band community technical preview (CTP) for their compiler, adding explicit conversion operators, raw string literals, function template default arguments, delegating constructors, uniform initialization, and variatic templates. (See http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/C9-Lectures-Stephan-T-Lavavej-Core-C-/STLCCS...
for instructions on how to use the CTP). Microsoft is promising more such feature releases during the first half of 2013. This is important for the whole C++ community, since it means that full C++11 support is becoming a reality across all widely used compilers.
Shortly after this talk, Herb held a Q&A session where people had the opportunity to ask him questions about these announcements (can't find a link at the moment).
Someone asked whether Microsoft intends to implement full 100% support for standard C++(11), and Herb answered with a resounding 'yes'.
<rant>
IMO, yet more marketing b***s***. This has been said before, and Herb has long since lost my trust (and the trust of many others). He is no longer a free voice. The only person on C9 that doesn't come off as an MS shill is STL.
Who is "STL" ?
Did anyone tell him about the problems with VC's preprocessor that come up on this list again and again and that prevent a powerful preprocessor metaprogramming library like Chaos from being usable on VC?
He's been told repeatedly.
Perhaps Herb Sutter does not have the power at Microsoft to determine what Microsoft will do in regards to complying with the C++ standard, as opposed to being just one perhaps leading voice among many in determining such things.
--
Not that I'm against a "foundation" or against adding more libraries to the standard library, but the only things that C++ programmers need to produce portable code are C++ compilers that implement the standard (and only the standard--not a bunch of vendor-specific extensions). As an example, paraphrasing, "We're proposing 'await' but if the committee doesn't want it we can always add it as an extension." It is particular compiler vendors and their compilers that are getting in the way of progress.
I disagree in principal that compiler vendors should not provide extensions to a computer language. After all gcc has done it for many years. Of course I feel that compiler vendors should implement a computer language as it is defined by the standard for that language and only provide extensions in situations where the extensions can be turned off in a clearly defined manner.