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Re:C++ 20: The Core Language by jandrewrogers on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @03:03PM (#21456067)
Sure, you will have code written in an older idiomatic style but there is some continuity, most C++17 programmers used to be C++11/14 programmers. Upgrading code from e.g. C++11 to C++17 is relatively incremental, typically easily recognized, and can be done opportunistically. Obviously going from C++03 to C++17 would be much more expensive, so that is a bit of a different case. Rapid improvements in code analysis often breaks previously clean builds in newer compilers, so you often find yourself doing hygienic work on old C++ code anyway.

This does imply some ongoing maintenance work related solely to keeping the code base consistently "modern". This almost always makes the C++ simpler and more maintainable and often reduces the line count, so it is worth the nominal investment. The massive improvement in template code readability is worth the price of admission all by itself.

Re:C++ 20: The Core Language by cpeterso on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @03:29PM (#21456328)
Here is a proposal (from CppCon 2019) to create C++ epochs to drop support for old misfeatures in new code (inspired by Rust's epochs). Code written in the new epoch would still be fully backwards-compatible with older C++ versions and compilers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFdKFoQxRqM

Re:C++ 20: The Core Language by steveklabnik on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @05:20PM (#21457399)
Re:C++ 20: The Core Language by Crinus on Wednesday November 06, 2019 @08:19AM (#21462186)
So you'll not only need to know all these sublanguages (epochs) but also how they interact with each other, especially when you need to refactor code that needs to cross these "epoch boundaries" (refactor the functionality not just to "upgrade" to a different epoch). Who comes up with that stuff? :-/