How come, given that currently C++ has three years to release a new standard and then about the same until the latest release gets spread around all major compilers?

https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support

Right now with C++20 around the corner, C++14 is still the safest bet for portable code, whereas in Rust we still see relevant crates that depend on nightly.

Here is the list of all the major features added to Rust since 1.0:

* The new lifetime model (non-lexical lifetimes)

* Async fn

* Procedural macros

* ? operator

* Import name resolution changes

* impl Trait

* C-style unions

Here's the list of features added in C++17 and C++20:

* constexpr if

* Modules

* Structured binding

* Type deduction helpers

* Coroutines

* <=> operator

* Concepts

* Expanded the set of expressions and statements that qualify as constexpr to the point that it's a very different feature from what it was in C++11.

In the same amount of time, C++ has added roughly the same number of features, but I would qualitatively say that C++'s feature additions are more impactful than Rust's feature additions, especially in terms of making newer code unrecognizable to programmers used only to the old version.

That's what I meant by pace versus cadence--overall, C++ has changed more, but it tends to change in triennial bursts instead of every six weeks.

The difference being that C++ developers have around 6 years time to get acquainted with each version.

The 3 years for each ISO revision, plus around three until the standard is actually usable in a portable way.

My old dusty non-maintained MFC applications still compile on latest Visual Studio.

> C++14 is still the safest bet for portable code

There are supported versions of RHEL that still only support C++11, FWIW.

True, but those are the same ones stuck on Java 1.4. :(