I'm sorry but can we stop hating on "academics"? No one in research matches your description. The intersection of academia and C++ contains only practitioners (like in the industry), who just want their code to work; and maybe some verification people who'd rather wish C++ was smaller because it is a hell of a beast to do static analysis on. Both these categories are real people having real use cases. The programming language crowd is generally more interested in stuff like dependent types or effect systems, not templates.
If you replace 'academic' with the secondary definition: "not of practical relevance; of only theoretical interest." it is probably true though. Having known some of the C++ standard contributors, they strongly defend themselves against the "not of practical relevance" part with "look what I wrote". Sure it's clever but adding language features just to say "look what I wrote, it's clever is no excuse for building a language that's become a train wreck.
(I have been coding in C++ on and off professionally since 1985 and I do like some of the C++11 and c++14 features. The pointer improvements are great but the template stuff is a complete joke on us).
Sure it's clever but adding language features just to say "look what I wrote, it's clever is no excuse for building a language that's become a train wreck.
Actually, the rationale behind the language features you're criticizing is that people in the real world were already using some techniques in C++ in a needlessly complex and convoluted way, and these new additions not only simplify these implementations but also allow the compilers to output helpful, user-friendlier messages.
Take concepts, for example. You may not like template metaprogramming, but like it or not they are used extensively in the real-world, in the very least in the form of STL and Eigen. Template metaprogramming is a central feature of C++ consumed by practically each and every single C++ developer, in spite of rarely producing code them. Does it make any sense at all to criticize work to improve a key feature that benefits each and every C++ programmer, in spite of not having to write code with it?
And no one of sane mind would argue in favour of shoehorning #include and #ifndef/#define in detriment to a proper module system.
Just because you aren't familiar or well-versed with some C++ features, or aware of how extensively they are used, it doesn't mean they are not used or that the stuff you don't know automatically qualifies as a trainwreck.
If you really did any serious work writing template metaprogramming code, or were aware of what happens under the hood with libraries that were developed with it, you wouldn't be criticizing recent contributions to improve it's UX, for both developers and library/module consumers, as a trainwreck.
I'm sorry but can we stop hating on "academics"? No one in research matches your description. The intersection of academia and C++ contains only practitioners (like in the industry), who just want their code to work; and maybe some verification people who'd rather wish C++ was smaller because it is a hell of a beast to do static analysis on. Both these categories are real people having real use cases. The programming language crowd is generally more interested in stuff like dependent types or effect systems, not templates.
> soft academic sand
shrug.