Correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't follow C++ very closely, but based on previous discussions on HN, the opposition paper obliquely referenced in the blog post was presumably Bjarne Stroustrup's, who IIRC had already said he would work behind the scenes to make sure the final pro forma vote to standardize C++26 would fail.

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Maxatar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Yes that's right, and from following some threads on reddit about this, he used some really dirty tactics to get it to fail, like scheduling certain snap elections to happen with very short notice at times of the day when people who would oppose his point of view would likely be asleep.

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zugi an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Reddit is a cesspool, I wouldn't put faith in anything you read there.

There were no "dirty tricks". The C++ standards committee works by a vaguely defined "consensus", which requires more than "the majority rules". Contracts got added to the C++26 draft. Then there was consensus that Contracts needed to be fixed, but they could never get consensus on any particular fix. So they cruised along relatively unchanged.

In the end, the only way to NOT accept a marginal Contracts feature was to vote down the full language spec. Now they'll regroup and decide how to proceed.

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adzm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So is he a hero, or villain? Does it all come down to concepts?

	▲	afdbcreid an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Not concepts, contracts.

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locknitpicker 25 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> Correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't follow C++ very closely, but based on previous discussions on HN, the opposition paper obliquely referenced in the blog post was presumably Bjarne Stroustrup's (...)

I've noticed that Bjarne Stroustrup is being subjected to a smear campaign, when things are far simpler and far less conspiratorial than they are making out to be.

There are indeed papers demonstrating that not only is the current proposal for contracts broken but it also fails to adhere to core C++ principals. They have been published since at least 2017. Contracts aren't new, nor the problems they introduced. They've been routinely removed from C++ standards, and so far the proposal wasn't fixed.

So ask yourself this: why was a notoriously broken feature forced into the proposal when it was clear it wasn't going to pass?

From an outsider's point of view, I see this from a different perspective. Contracts proponents tried to use bureaucratic tricks and threats of abnormal processes to force a broken feature they knew for years that wasn't supported or passing the smell test. And now that they saw their efforts thwarted , the complain that their plan failed and they have opposition?

I mean, there is even a paper dating back to 2025 called "contracts concerns" and from 2026 called "contracts fundamental flaws". The C++ standard is a consensus-driven process. Does this look like consensus? Clearly no.

So we have a group of people who ignored the calls that they were pushing a broken feature, but tried to railroad the process anyway and ignore any concern or warning. Then, when they tried to force their way through the process, their bluff was called and their threats failed. And now they are lashing back.

	▲	wahern 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I have no horse in this race[1], and tried not to use opinionated language. Of course there can't be a conspiracy when Stroustrup said what he was gonna do beforehand. But IIUC there was already a two-thirds majority to finalize the draft, so that's hardly railroading. [1] I'm still in the C camp, and don't write C++, but contracts seem of dubious value given, e.g., the lack of guarantees about whether something can be compile-time vs runtime enforced. It's sold as a safety thing but in reality it seems the value is more about optimization & performance and potentially could cause security issues of it's own, at the very least DoS.