Can C++ be 10x Simpler & Safer? - Herb Sutter - CppCon 2022 

Matt Godbolt is such a legend, adding support for cpp2 to compiler explorer during the talk.

I have literally dreamed of this exact idea. I'm so amped at the prospect of this becoming real. 🤞 Herb Sutter, as always, proves that he deserves our respect.

Finally, after YEARS of warmup, Herb Sutter finally says it: if C++ is so good, why isn't there a C++ 2?

This is soooo much more promising than Carbon IMO!

Ever since I saw that one talk by Herb on an actual good way of passing arguments, that talk never left me as I thought about it again and again, and now I can't describe how happy I am to see Herb still keep actively pushing C++ towards this direction of simplifying it. I even shed a tear at some point watching the talk and I believe it means a lot to the whole C++ community as it does to me, so I just wanna say thank you a million to Herb for doing this fascinating job of actively and sincerely trying to make our world better

This is the first "alternative" I've wanted to learn. Thank you for the dream of a better, way less complicated future.

This is exactly what we need in the world. I started learning Rust because of the amount of work I'd need to do to go from "my code compiles" through to "and now it's not a pending lawsuit". Rust is not for everyone, so I'm really happy to see C++ moving towards a world where it catches up to (and hopefully exceeds!) Rust's ergonomics and safety.

This really is quite good! I've been waiting years for someone to reduce complexity in C++!

Wow, I didn't realize there would be cameras on the mic stands! Super glad I was able to twist Matt's arm into hacking support into Compiler Explorer before the talk was over - your reaction was priceless 😄. Thanks for a great closing keynote as always.

Very nicely done, Herb! This approach not only bypasses the backwards-compatible limitations baked into C++ while still allowing mixing code, but keeps the language feeling like a refreshed C++ instead of something completely new. I think this compromise will be a appealing to many C++ developers. I think Rust is an excellent alternative to C++ (and is available today) but comes at the cost of learning a different way of thinking about memory safety and interoperability headaches with C++. Carbon is another experimental language trying to overcome these issues with a new language that prioritizes compatibility but is not familiar to those coming from C++. I suspect cppfront will be an easier sell to those currently heavily-invested in C++ but want more simplicity and safety guarantees.

I've always believed this style of syntax versioning to be the correct way forward. Count me in!

This is not just a fascinating idea/experiment, but may even fall into the "essential for continued language evolution" category! I really hope it succeeds

It's great that Herb is doing this. I am designing a way to do this in C, but once it's done, no one will know or care about it except for me. When Herb is done, it has a good chance of actually going somewhere. Even if not in the standard, there's no way it doesn't get a community behind it after this talk...

In addition to his technical skills, Herb is an excellent presenter and leader.

Amazing work Herb. I now again have hope for C++'s future. Also, very good point in the end about naming the syntax cpp2 explicitly. Human nature is one of the reasons there is still so much confusion about the language.

I love this. It definately took a rust-like approach to compiler warnings / errors, which is great. Not only are the messages clear and they tell you how you can fix your mistake, but it also helps keep safety within c++ programs. I also enjoy some of the "syntactic sugar" resembilng some of the newer programming languages. I also never knew about the whole NSA ordeal with type unsafety and them advising against c & c++. Thousand Thanks to Herb Sutter And cppcon

This could be a gamechanger in terms of reducing complexity. Hyped to see this come forward!

I'm amazed that Herb Sutter after so many years is still going strong, still is thinking cogently, and even looking much younger than his years. Kudos.

Really amazing what he was able to accomplish with basic principles. I really look forward to a CPP future like the one he displayed in this talk.

It's been a long time I've done c++, but that got my attention back. I could imagine something like this being the default and you can enter "unsafe mode" like in other languages for the "old" c++ style.

so modest. i've got a feeling this is going to be a historical talk.

Promising evolution, this transformation became inevitable, good luck Dear Herb ✌

I have been wanting cpp2 for a long time. It is much better than I imagined. Would love to see it succeed.

This is literally like a dream come true. More than once I've written fake cpp code in an empty editor just to imagine what a unified function syntax would be like, what a unified paramter passing paradigm would be like without all the const ref crap. There is an echo in my soul that this just makes so much sense, and I beleive it is a common feeling among many cpp coders. Yet cpp toolchain always felt like a behemonth that's too big and too complicated for a lone developer to tackle on. So a great many lone developers are left to just imagine what's possible. It really need someone like Sutter to push this venture. Please make this happen. Sutter is like jesus reborn for cpp.

It is very surprising how much can be improved while being tethered to syntax1 code generation. Fantastic work.

It's a different programming language that interoperates well with C++. Herb keeps saying "it is C++" but I don't know what that means.

I love it. I can't wait to start using it.

I'm amazed. Really hope this project works out.

That's just a fantastic idea! As Herb said, he wants to teach people more about how to program instead of the details of C++. So and I want to program more instead of learning about quirks of particular syntax/semantics of C++. Herb, you have full support of the random dude from the internet!

Amazing work! Hope this will get a future!

Fantastic, I don't need backwards compatibly for my green fields programs. And I may not need to learn TS, if this can run in the browser with decent screen IO. :) Thanks to Herb for his long term efforts.

The safety idea of showing errors and giving exact solutions for standard recommendations is really good.

I have been ranting for years why C style arrays and pointer decay kills the consistent value semantics of C++ This idea of doing away with pointer arithmetic is absolutely the best thing. Also uniform syntax!!!

All the love to you! I full heartedly support the Idea!

This is a gold mine of explicit ideas for doing a C-2.

Onece I'm finished my thesis, I'm going to start working on LSP and treesitter for this (with Neovim support in mind). If this reaches escape velocity, it's going to be huge. A transpiler isn't as exciting as something like Carbon, but I think this is the right increment to move forward.

1:04:00 If it works on anything with a subscript that has an integral value supplied and has a size(), it fails on std::map.

I' m so touched by this talk, thank you Sutter!

Herb, you have outdone yourself this time!

I've been avoiding C++ in projects because of all the complexity and the chances to fail miserably. But this looks pretty good! I have one important question though: Why not `const` as the default for everything everywhere? I am a firm believer in "the laziest solution should be the best", so adding sth like an explicit `mut` instead of `const` would fit that paradigm.

Thanks for providing this talk! He already had me at nodiscard is a default. I think this experiment will decide about the future of C++. It has reached a level of complexity with a bunch of optional but actually essential rules to follow, that makes it unappealing to work with. Especially if you compare it to younger languages with all these features baked into the language standard. I hope this will bring C++ to a state of the art level.

Even if it doesn´t succeed, you have created an awesome new language!

Thank you, This helps understand this statement Bjarne S. had which i always wondered what it referred to, but yes i understood this means there are some keys inside C++ to provide simple language, which is kind of how i do program. After learning through all the keynotes and conferences what this might be i started programming that way since about 2+years more intensively, never experienced a major leak or issue yet, but i stick structures which can't have those issues. String, vector, locals, many techniques i learn for good experience shared. So thanks again and by the way i tried compile cfront a while ago, as i wanted really write in C++ for some environments which don't support it, but cpp2 is kind of what i looks for as well, i believe there is a small community of people who will use and work with it, that's very very likely. For example if i want something critical (or not) done, i might do the cpp2 version of it to learn more of the best practices, even if the main project is in cpp sources. Jean-François

First time watching one of his talks. Didn't know John Cena gave C++ talks!

This is a revolutionary approach and I loved it :)

Hits so hard. Imho this seems to be the path forward to keep our hands on the full power of C++ while getting more compiler-driven safety with least friction.

This really reminds me of how refreshing it is using the Burst compiler in Unity. Small bubble of "new c#" that is isolated and allows you to really claw back the performance where it matters.

Bravo! 👏 Bring it on.

This is great! Shouldn't be unlisted.

learnt alot of c++ by just watching this video... kudos Herb for the effort and all the best with this very worthy experiment

This is what we need, not smth like carbon. GREAT TALK!!!

36:30 Calling free functions with object syntax is very good, too. C# extension methods. This is very good not only from the toolability perspective, this is also good to better follow single responsibility principle: we shouldn't define draw and save functions inside the classes, but ability to call object.draw() is very nice.

Very interesting and thought-provoking talk, love the experiment proposed here

I worked for a company that built a front for a second language, and used Prolog to write this. Prolog was very powerful for this purpose (perhaps not that fast, though).

Much respect, Mr. Sutter. I will keep an eye on this; amazing work.

This is revolutionary

imho, C++20 syntax is near-perfect. Just deprecate the ridiculous standard library and build a new one from scratch. Learning from libraries in newer languages might be a good idea.

I'm very impressed for the modern cppfront idea! Actually, the cpp1 is huge currently.

I love programming in straight C. Maybe this is what I needed to jump into C++.

"don't pay for what you don't use" and "bounds checking by default" seem mutually exclusive

I didn't run of to a different language, I came in as a compiled language newcommer and chose rust, partly because C++ just appeared bloated, with a lot of "Yes, this is the most straight-forward way, but it's unsafe and we don't do that anymore", and no consensus as to what current best practice even is. I wish this project the best of luck :)

I fail to see any reason why anyone should use this instead of rust

This is awesome

I loved this talk.

Herb is such a BOSS! I hope this experiment leads somewhere - it'd make me get back to being a C++ developer again.

Imho when I read the "name: type = value" syntax I want to check if it's April fools. At least do it the other way around, "type: name = value". And when we're at it, if the colon is always there just leave it out.

Long overdue, may the force be with you...

I'm counting on this

The way I solved this problem with Script2 (Serial Chinese Room Interprocess and Telemetry Script) was I didn't use the std library and I instead wrote everything by hand using contiguous Automaton SCII data types that auto-grow from stack to heap. I use a single translation unit that can compile all the code in seconds. You really don't need to use multiple translation units until you're trying to complete many huge libraries in parallel using one translation unit per library.

I have been on a "Rewrite it in Rust" path for the past few years, and am down to one last rather large C++ project that I was wondering if I should rewrite as well. Recently I decided to finally take the plunge, but this talk made me rethink it. I'll leave it C++ for now and see how cppfront develops. The cppfront code is surprisingly small, considering what it can do -- Herb managed do a lot with relatively little code. I'm cautiously optimistic!

Brilliant!

Amazing work!

Great talk, thank you!

Pretty cool stuff. I wonder what you'll do with covariant return types when you implement classes. I always found that unique_ptr not having the ability to be covariant blocked adoption.

Great talk, Herb ! As usual

I love the new function syntax. Zig is working on a very similar refactor to their functions syntax.

I find the idea of the gargantuan and ugly monster that is C++ continuing to evolve for another thirty years terrifying.

Great talk. It gives sad and promising feelings at the same time. However, I believe, it's for sure better than some other X languages as "c++ replacers or killers"

It's called learning to code, which is quite a bit different from building programs with copy/paste.

Herb has one of those beautiful brains that thinks incredible things and also has enough horsepower left over to explain it in a digestible way. I loved this idea so much. The semantics looks very simiar to object pascal, without the ugly verbosity. I wonder what anders hejlsberg would think about it.

So if we really do need a successor, having looked at all the contenders, I can get behind Herbs cpp2.

Such a good talk

Another amazing talk by Herb!

I really liked this talk and the direction it's going in, I want to see C/C++ become a more secure programming language.

C++++ sounds like an interesting concept!

I'm not convinced a systems level language should force smart pointers or particular trendy abstractions. For example, pointer manipulation is essential. There's too much handwaving in the answer to that question that was asked at the end. Maybe this is the direction of evolution of C++, but then it won't be C++ anymore. For me, C++ is the language I go to for maximum computing efficiency. This seems to be an example of the age-old tension in language design: Some people want a safe, productive language that is nice to use, but many want a useful language that can get out of their way when they program at a low level. Personally, I think that the safety features should be left to tools, and the language should be kept as simple and as unlimited/expressive as possible.

When it comes to cppcon, Herb Sutter is my second favorite speaker (after bjourne stroustrup)

When Herb put C# handle allocation into a dialect of C++ (gc_arena, 2016), I thought "what a waste" . Making gc.new available is the appropriate place, the C++ place, to put this kind of compatibility. You can still have full cpp2-like syntax whether you must run in CLR or not. I saw gc_arena on an early slide and wondered how much time was going to be wasted there. Answer: NONE! As soon as he talked about allocating memory on the stack, on the heap, wherever, I realized that he'd arrived at an answer to this that anyone, even a curmudgeon like me, could be delighted at. Good Job, Herb. I've also been bounds-check resistant because -- well, short answer is, the last time this was a flaming conversation for me was in the 90s, before Moore's Law had done most of what it could to processor speed. I saw code-bloat and exec time grind-down in that direction. Having cpp2 do it naturally, natively like that (post-[size]Moore, too) is DEFINITELY a step in the right direction. And even from outside the US, we have to take "Wherever possible, do not use memory-unsafe languages" really, really, seriously. This is a way to do that. I want to be HAPPY to write C++ for a long time yet and cpp2 may be the best way forward. (see 40'00 - 45'00) okay, I'm a full-on C#/.NET hater.Hate on me for it. I think I have valid reasons but I acknowledge that there is lots of good code -- e.g. Zachtronics -- written in C#. This is not the place for those reasons.

Lots hard asks there by Herb. Lots of promising benefits. Time will tell.

OMG this is amazing, way better than carbon

This is super exciting. I'm a Rust engineer & I love Rust, but I would also love to see C++ become modern & safe so that we can all build better software with less headaches.

I was very skeptical at the beginning of the viewing, but by the end I was rather inspired.

I have got the compiler working on MacOS but there are a few headers included in the utilities header that had to be changed. I will submit a pull request with the guards, although a few includes just don't exist on MacOS. Will there be a forum on possibly features/extensions/syntax/how to help and contribute etc?

I suggest that instead of cpp2, we call it sage. Because sage is an herb, and Herb's wisdom is sage

been playing with this, most promising thing I have seen in a while, Carbon is ugly and not C++, but cpp2 is C++ and is beautiful so far

I'd like to add to the "this is just an experiment, it might fall" idea - even if it fails, it can generate value, bring something new or expand our knowledge - I think this is valuable either way. Then it would be probably of even more value if the decisions that were made were documented, so that someone could build on top of it. But that would probably pile up the work required

I love rust grammar. Don't get me wrong. However instead of transpiling, why we can't simply deprecate all those dangerous sharp edges (malloc, allocating new, union, unboundchecked accesses) that now c++ already has safer alternatives then just remove or internalise/classical-mode them. If the *actual* problem is today people still *keep* using them as before. Why won't c++ just stop them from using those?

cpp2 -> cpp1 -> c -> assembly Sounds like a great idea, 10 years down the line, cpp3 -> cpp2 The problem is maintaining back compatibility and it's always going to f@ck things up. Always, rust works so well because it is not designed to interop with c, yes it can but that's additional, not the core part.

I don't understand why people rave about this presentation. The problems described don't require new (ugly) syntax or compiler to be solved, we just need to improve current compilers. The real problem in cpp is that with every new feature it forces you to go templates which really hard to debug

The parameter passing syntax looks like it would be non-trivial to learn and therefore may impede the adoption of cpp2 if it is implemented as shown in this talk. GC, if added, will probably lead to fatal fragmentation of the community, as it did with D, because half of the community will just switch it off. This whole proposal in general is great as an improvement to teaching, learning and safely using of C++. One other problem I see is that it is not a huge immediate improvement in most C++ use cases, so bottom-up adoption may be slow.