C++ Developers vs. The Standards Committee

Description

A meme using the Anakin Skywalker 'It's outrageous, it's unfair' format from Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith. The top caption reads, 'When the C++ committee does not include reflection in the new standard yet again'. The image below shows Anakin Skywalker looking distraught and complaining. The subtitled text at the bottom captures his famous line, 'How could they do this? It's outrageous, it's unfair'. This meme perfectly captures the long-standing frustration within the C++ community. Reflection, the ability of a program to inspect and modify its own structure and behavior at runtime, is a powerful feature available in many other modern languages. Its repeated omission from new C++ standards (like C++17, C++20, and C++23) is a major pain point for developers who are forced to rely on complex template metaprogramming and macro-based workarounds to achieve similar functionality. The meme equates the developers' feelings of being slighted by the standards committee (WG21) to Anakin's sense of injustice at not being granted the rank of Master

Common Tags

Cpp DeveloperHumor LanguageFeatures LanguageEvolution CodingHumor ISOStandard CompilerDesign

Comments

Anonymous ★ Top Pick The C++ committee treats reflection like a Jedi Master treats the dark side: they acknowledge its power, but are terrified of what will happen if they actually let anyone use it

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

The C++ committee treats reflection like a Jedi Master treats the dark side: they acknowledge its power, but are terrified of what will happen if they actually let anyone use it
Anonymous

Every time WG21 punts on reflection, another senior dev writes a 300-line constexpr template that accidentally invents category theory just to stringify a struct - zero-cost abstraction, they said
Anonymous

After 20 years of template metaprogramming gymnastics and SFINAE nightmares, C++ developers have mastered the art of compile-time reflection through sheer force of will and recursive template instantiation - who needs language support when you have 10,000-line error messages to guide you?
Anonymous

After decades of template metaprogramming gymnastics and SFINAE dark magic just to inspect types at compile time, C++ developers watching the committee defer reflection yet again is like watching Anakin's fall to the dark side - inevitable, tragic, and somehow still surprising every time it happens. Meanwhile, languages born in the 2010s ship with reflection in their MVP, but hey, at least we have concepts now... only took 20 years for those too
Anonymous

C++ reflection: the feature WG21 keeps punting like a perfect-forwarding universal reference - always almost usable, eternally undefined
Anonymous

C++ skipped reflection again, so our “metadata” is CRTP + constexpr + SFINAE + a Clang plugin - zero-cost abstraction, infinite-cost pipeline
Anonymous

WG21 defers reflection; we ship it anyway - 12k-line Clang plugin, custom IDL, and nightly builds that standardize ODR violations
@GLXBX 5y

Explain pls
@Daniils_Loputevs 5y

Russian translate: когда комитет C ++ снова не включает отражение в новом стандарте. Как они могли это сделать? Это возмутительно, это несправедливо.
1. dev_meme 5y
  
  Evolution of meme text 👀
2. @sany_nikonov 5y
  
  Рефлексия не переводится))
@feskow 5y

Is this a Java reference?
@dfgprg 5y

Вместо того чтобы програмить - учим новые стандарты👍
1. dev_meme 5y
  
  Isn’t this a same thing? Btw, couldn’t you stick to community language, please?
  
  @ANeufeld 5y
  
  Dafuq
  
  @GLXBX 5y
  
  So, community language is C++ or what?
  
  @ANeufeld 5y
  
  if (strcmp(&community_language, "C++"){ /* write however you want in the comments */ }
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  Ooooh
  
  @dfgprg 5y
  
  Looks like old good plain C
  
  @LineDiscipline 5y
  
  if (strcmp(&community_language, "C++"))[[ likely ]]{ /* tak lutshche? */ }
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  if ( std::strcmp(community_language.c_str(), "C++") )[[ likely ]]{ /* a tak? */ }
  
  @daniiltimachov 5y
  
  std::strcmp ?🤭
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  yes, in fact
  
  @daniiltimachov 5y
  
  ain't std::string::compare more cplusplusish?
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  iirc it doesn't support char const *, so you'll need to using namespace std::string_literals; "C++"sv
  
  @daniiltimachov 5y
  
  std::string constructor: *exists*
  
  @bit69tream 5y
  
  #include <boost/algorithm/string.hpp> if (boost::iequals(community_language, std::string("C++"))) { std::cout << std::string("community language is " << std::string("c++") << std::endl << std::flush; } else { std::cout << std::string("community language is not " << std::string("c++") << std::endl << std::flush; }
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  why flush twice?
  
  @bit69tream 5y
  
  because
  
  @daniiltimachov 5y
  
  boost rocks 4real
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  using namespace std::string_literals; std::cout << "community language is " << (community_language == "C++"sv ? "C++" : "not C++") << '\n';
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  std::endl does a flush and that's slow, so it's going away
  
  @bit69tream 5y
  
  cumunity_language == "C++"
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  i wanted that to be the next iteration
  
  @dfgprg 5y
  
  Btw, 2 errors in expression
  
  @ANeufeld 5y
  
  Hmm, I only see one error, that missing parenthesis.
  
  @Agent1378 5y
  
  Or Php
Deleted Account 5y

i want those contracts too

Use J and K for navigation

C++ Developers vs. The Standards Committee

Description

Categories

Common Tags

Comments

More like this

Gimli and Legolas Unite: C Dev, C++ Dev, and a Rust Hater

Batman Slaps Robin: C++ Speedup Matters at Billions of Runs

C/C++ Devs No Longer Defend Their Build Systems, Just This Look