Comment: Re:I don't like boost (Score 2) 333
b) a darn STANDARD _Binary_ API so I don't have to worry about which _compiler_ AND _platform_ was used,
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Do you mean generate compiler/platform independent code (some IR like bytecode/LLIR)? Or do you mean ntoh/hton and the like?
h) Provide PROPER 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit characters
i) Fix the darn grammar so that compilers accept UNICODE source
j) Fix the darn grammar so that compilers RECOGNIZE identifiers WITH Unicode characters
Should both be fixed with C++11. Except 24-bit characters, which I've never heard of before.
k) Add a proper exponent operator
l) Add a proper wedge operator, along with inner and outer product operators
Seem rather special-cased here.
m) Add proper multiple return types
You can do this by returning a std::pair, a std::tuple, or a structure you build. However, I don't believe there is an easy syntactic way to split a pair/tuple into multiple local variables.
n) Fix all the times the spec says "undefined" or "implementation dependent". The point of a spec is to SPECIFY what the operations do, NOT to be ambiguous because in some idiotic universe 'char' is not exactly 8-bits.
Never going to happen. Most of those "undefined/implementation dependent" items are features, and compilers take advantage of them to optimize code. It does make some quirky edge cases, but makes a lot of code optimization techniques in use today possible.
When is C++ going to automatic garbage collection WITH the ability to tell the garbage system how many milliseconds you are allowed to use (inclusive from ZERO.)
Do you know a system that does this max time? Because it sounds ridiculously difficult, and would lead to cases where a program would have to fail because it has no memory yet is not allowed to do a full garbage sweep/reclaim.
The problem with that C++ is not that you can't write simple code, but is that the languages makes it easy to write verbose bloated code.
I actually don't believe this is the problem with C++ - you can write verbose, bloated code in most languages. The problem I see is that C++ was made to be as strict a superset of C as possible, and inherited an audience who want full control of things like object size, and memory allocation/deallocation behavior. Because of this, generialized code requires way more knobs to be tweaked than you expect, and templates have evolved to be a hacked-together functional programming language to determine optimal operation. In order to generate an optimal, generic library you have to make the code itself incredibly difficult to maintain.