I haven't been involved in the C++ world in a long time. However, I'm a huge fan of Python. So as long at C++ still has the ability to be granular, and step back, using things like 'auto', I see the steps as good. Honestly and admittedly, I haven't had a chance to review the C++!4 release in detail and I probably won't, since I just use Python. If there are no serious performance tradeoffs, and I was forced to use C++ for work, I'd be excited about any changes that make C++ more pythonic.