I don't think Herb's points apply to an ordinary declare-an-object-and-immediately-initialize-using-the-constructor, do they?

He gives an example using aggregate initialization, but that's not the same thing:

    // Classic C++ declaration order     // Modern C++ style

    employee e{ empid };                 auto e = employee{ empid };
    widget w{ 12, 34 };                  auto w = widget{ 12, 34 };

He makes the case that it's nicer to use auto pretty much wherever we can, to avoid repeating ourselves regarding type, and to avoid unexpected conversions. The auto keyword doesn't apply in our case, there's no way to use auto to simplify a statement like:

    Widget w(1,2,3);