Rules of thumb for the design of C++0x
Bjarne Stroustrup · 2005
programming language is far more than a simple collection of features. My ideal is to provide a set of facilities that smoothly work together to support design and programming styles of a generality beyond my imagination. Here, I outline rules of thumb (guidelines, principles) that are being applied in the design of C++0x. For example, generality is preferred over specialization, novices as well as experts are supported, library extensions are preferred over language changes, compatibility with C++98 is emphasized, and evolution is preferred over radical breaks with the past. Since principles cannot be understood in isolation, I very briefly present a few of the proposals being considered in the ISO C++ standards committee.