C++0x Rejects Concepts Proposal
(Via Lambda the Ultimate.)
Danny Kalev (reporting for InformIT): On Monday, July 13th 2009 Concepts were dramatically voted out of C++0x during the C++ standards committee meeting in Frankfurt. This shocking news raises many questions and concerns. Unquestionably, these will be discussed in various forums in coming weeks and months. However, I will try to answer three burning questions here: What led to the failure of Concepts? How will the removal of Concepts affect C++0x? Will Concepts make a comeback in the near future?
Jeremy Siek (reacting on LtU): As one of the co-authors of the Concepts proposal, this was a particularly sad day for me.
As a casual observer of the C++0x process, I'm surprised at several levels:
- that the C++ community could deem something "too complicated";
- that something that is to simplify C++ could itself become so complicated;
- and that the C++ standards committee is capable of generating such shocking news
Looking at the bright side, C++0x will still have closures.
Re: C++0x Rejects Concepts Proposal
Beman Dawes had a much better analysis on the boost mailing list:
The committee is very much in favor of Concepts. But Concepts are seen as so important that they have to be right. And the strong consensus was that getting Concepts right, for any reasonable definition of "right", would add several years to the schedule. There was also a consensus that an implementation of a compiler that could compile the entire standard library is part of the definition of "right". While ConceptGCC has been a great help, it isn't there as far as validating "right". Personally, I think Clang may end up being the compiler that eventually validates Concepts.