C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from 'serious attacks'

This has been posted a lot over the past few days.

With comment(s): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43259663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43234061

No comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43250618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43264796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43241423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43238158

Stroustrup is right that C++ is under pressure, but I'm baffled that his response to this is so ineffective.

The focus on incremental backwards-compatible changes is only looking inwards, and isn't facing the external pressure. Limiting solutions to ones that don't require rewriting C++ code is not going to stop those who have already started rewriting their C++ code. Banning proposals that create safe subsets or lifetime annotations (d3466 R1 4.4/4.5) isn't satisfying to anyone who is already jumping to new languages with these things.

The direction of C++ WG only cements the perception that C++ is for unfixable legacy codebases. They have decided that having the cake is absolutely critical, and promise to find a way to eat it.

Stroustrup seems to see the safety issue only as a problem with codebases that aren't using Modern C++ (which is a good thing to fix from C++ perspective), but doesn't seem to realize that the bar for safety has been set way above Modern C++. Those moving away from C++ have heard of smart pointers and std::vector. These aren't the solution they're looking for, these are the problems they want to get rid of.