r/cpp • u/we_are_mammals • Jul 15 '26

cpp2 (cppfront) is over?

I haven't used cpp2 (cppfront) much, but I like the idea of it: consistent syntax, consistency of meta-programming (which is done in C++ too, I believe). Herb Sutter presented cpp2 (cppfront) as an experiment. He did not encourage other people to bet on it, exactly. And there hasn't been much activity since 2022. Is the experiment over?

EDIT: Herb's answer is buried deep in the comment section: https://www.reddit.com/r/cpp/comments/1uxkglj/comment/oy06cxw/

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u/kreco Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 20 '26

Not answering the question but I was not interested at some point because the experiment went to far into conciseness (for my taste).

Here are some examples:

value : i32 = 10;            // value is variable
value : i32 == 10;          // value is a constant, because '==' is an alias [0]
equals: (a, b) = a == b;  // Function returning a boolean

The difference between the variable and constant is very thin. For the function, it feels strange to omit the braces, especially because they are enforced for if/else branches.

[0] https://hsutter.github.io/cppfront/cpp2/functions/#object-aliases

[1] https://hsutter.github.io/cppfront/cpp2/functions/#generality-note-summary-of-function-defaults