[fefe23]

Oh no! Herb Sutter is leaving Microsoft?!

That does not bode well for Microsoft. At least from the outside perspective it looks like he was the adult in the room, the driving force behind standards adoption and even trying to steer C++-the-language towards a better vision of the future.

If he is gone, MSVC will again be the unloved bastard child it has long been before Herb's efforts started to pay off. This is very disheartening news.

I'm happy he held out for this long even though he was being stonewalled every step of the way, like when Microsoft proposed std::span and it was adopted but minus the range checking (which was the whole point of std::span).

Now he has been pushing for a C++ preprocessor. Consider how desperate you have to be to even consider that as a potential solution for naysayers blocking your every move.

[tux3]

The rumor that has been widely circulating is that the MSVC backend is being reused as a code generator for the Rust compiler (because nobody really understands PDBs anymore, not even Microsoft, and especially LLVM doesn't. So rustc could be a MSVC frontend instead to reuse all the existing arcane logic.)

MSVC will continue to be used for many years, and especially the backend might see renewed effort. But I don't know about the C++ frontend specifically, I've seen complaints about more and more bugs on the cpp subreddit. It's possible MS will be investing a little less in C++.

[pjmlp]

Disregarding the rumor, it is quite public information that on Azure side, C and C++ are now only allowed for existing code bases, or scenarios where nothing else is available.

Meanwhile on Windows side, it was made officially at Ignite that a similar decision is now to be followed upon Windows as well.

Here the official stuff, so whatever happens to MSVC is secondary,

https://azure.microsoft.com/fr-fr/blog/microsoft-azure-secur...

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2024/11/19/windo...

[bluGill]

> Now he has been pushing for a C++ preprocessor.

He has been showing it, but not pushing it. the difference is subtle but important. He is showing a lot of "what ifs" trying them, and pushing the useful ones back into the language. Reflection is on track for C++26 in large part because he inspired a lot of people with his metaclasses talk (a long time ago, but doing things right takes time)

[ghosty141]

Wait, why does std::span not do the range checking? We ran into that exact thing at work and were really confused why the hell it doesn't do it currently.

[steveklabnik]

I believe this is because [] doesn’t do checking normally, so this is seen as a consistency. I am not 100% sure, but I do remember it being a contentious decision.

.at() is added in C++26.

[chrsig]

It looks like he's staying on the committee and what not, just changing his day job. That's actually one of the benefits of having a committee & iso standardization process -- things aren't so reliant on a single engineer staying employed at a single company.

I'm sure it's never as clean a situation as anyone would like, but hey, world is a rough place sometimes.