Herb Sutter, chair of the ISO C++ ISO C++ committee, has left Microsoft after 22 years, to become technical fellow at Citadel Securities, where he wil

ISO C++ Chair Herb Sutter leaves Microsoft, declares forthcoming C++ 26 'most impactful release since C++11' • DEVCLASS

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2024-11-13 22:00:03

Herb Sutter, chair of the ISO C++ ISO C++ committee, has left Microsoft after 22 years, to become technical fellow at Citadel Securities, where he will work on technical strategy and training. He will continue to chair the ISO committee and claims that 2024 has been a “pivotal year” for the language.

Sutter spoke at CppCon in September where he said that “The C++ 26 standard … is likely to change the way we develop software,” and be the biggest change to the language since C++ 11. The specification for C++ 26 is set to be completed in mid-2026, as its name implies, though the rollout of implemented features in compilers such as Clang and GCC will be gradual; some are already present.

Safety is a big issue in the C++ community, with many security experts recommending that developers switch to languages such as Rust in order to avoid the bugs and issues associated with problems such as out of bounds memory usage and undefined behaviour. At CppCon, Sutter said safety parity did not mean perfection, but that “low-hanging priority targets” would be addressed, including more safe libraries within the standard, removal of safety-related undefined behavior, new compile-time static safety rules, and dynamic safety checks.

In a blog post this week, Sutter said the previous landmark release, C++ 11, introduced modern C++ with features such as auto, lambdas and safe smart pointers. C++ 26 will be characterised by “safety by default and first-class support for reflection-based generative compile-time libraries.”

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