r/cpp • u/we_are_mammals • 7d ago

cpp2 (cppfront) is over?

I haven't used cpp2 (cppfront) much, but I like the idea of it: consistent syntax, consistency of meta-programming (which is done in C++ too, I believe). Herb Sutter presented cpp2 (cppfront) as an experiment. He did not encourage other people to bet on it, exactly. And there hasn't been much activity since 2022. Is the experiment over?

EDIT: Herb's answer is buried deep in the comment section: https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1uxkglj/comment/oy06cxw/

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u/friedkeenan 7d ago

If I were to speculate the reasoning, then I would probably say it's because Herb's cppfront is intended to feed back into C++ and serve as a reference for proposals to C++, whereas Carbon is instead going off and doing its own thing, which doesn't really make it so different from other programming languages like Zig or Rust or whatever.

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u/13steinj 7d ago

To some extent the same can be claimed about Circle. Circle is also not allowed.

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u/friedkeenan 7d ago

Hm yeah, I wasn't aware posts directly about Circle weren't allowed. I thought I remembered there being more direct discussions about Circle here when there was more buzz around what it was doing, but maybe I'm just remembering comment chains or something. Regardless, I do feel like there might still be some difference/subjectivity at play there, but I'm struggling to put that feeling to words.

Carbon though is definitely not aiming back into C++. That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing an occasional post about it here but I also don't think I'd want it to take up too much discussion space on this subreddit, either.

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u/13steinj 7d ago

There were some posts specifically about the "safe" feature and Circle was being used as a demo device for the paper.

But before then posts generally were removed, I think Baxter even made a comment on Twitter about it at the time.