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I have to ask - does anyone actually use half of the C++ features? Exactly how much of C++'s 1600-page specification can be attributed to its success?


> I have to ask - does anyone actually use half of the C++ features? Exactly how much of C++'s 1600-page specification can be attributed to its success?

do you also use all the classes of Python or Java's standard library ? C++17's spec is ~1400 pages (http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2017/n471...) but the actual language spec stops at page 406, the remaining 1000 pages are the specifications for the standard library. And in these 400 pages of specs, there are a lot of examples, grammars... just look at the chapter on templates: it's ~80 pages but more than half are valid & invalid code examples.


Does anybody even understand half of it?


    I don't know half of it half as well as I should like; and 
    I like less than half of it half as well as it deserves.

    -- B.B.




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