“Modern” C++ Lamentations
I think that at this point, C++ has basically to be treated the same as the English language. Sure, you could write sentences that span three pages, employ Shakespearean vocabulary or words that hardly anyone has known since the abolition of Classics from university admissions tests, or encode another layer of meaning in the bit pattern of when you do and when you don&#x27;t use Oxford commas. What makes something good English communication is not whether you used those features correctly, employed the most in vogue ones or found the &quot;most elegant abstraction&quot; (&quot;there&#x27;s this one word attested in a handful of 14th century sources that captures exactly what I want to say, so I&#x27;ll use it without explanation&quot;), but whether you have struck the right tradeoff of minimising the combined effort put in by you and your audience and conveying your message faithfully.<p>Of course, for English, this is exactly the sort of problem that is addressed by style guides (and teachers&#x2F;peers reacting to you, and natural selection). I think what we need is more and better opinionated C++ style guides that don&#x27;t just talk about what line to place your { on, but have the confidence to say things on the level of &quot;std::move may add a marginal amount of efficiency, but greatly detracts from the legibility of code. Avoid using it altogether.&quot;