Last week I was in Redmond for the Microsoft MVP 2016 Summit. At the same time, the ISO C++ committee was having its fall meeting in Issaquah, which is very close to Redmond. Therefore, after the summit ended, a group of VC++ MVPs, including myself, decided to make the short trip to Issaquah and attend as observers the meetings, that are actually opened for the public. It was a very interesting experience and I am glad that I had the opportunity to take it.
The committee is organized in several working groups (WG) and study groups (SG). You can actually read all about that here. These groups have separate meetings as they are focussed on different things. I have attended a meeting of the Evolution Working Group (aka EWG), as, at that point, it looked like the most interesting of them all. These meetings actually took place in the same location where the final version of C++14 was voted.
Apart from the topics that have been discussed, which I will not elaborate on here, even though they were interesting and important, it was rather the way the committee is working that it was of most interest to me. I always had the impression that discussions were held in the fashion of the debates in the British Parliament or something similar, and I was surprised to see a much more organized, though still vocal, group. People are patiently taking turns to speak, constantly come with unexpected arguments or counter examples and eventually take polls to see what is the group’s overall opinion on the discussed topic(s). It also helped understand the process proposals go through from an initial form to the one that is eventually voted, if that is the case. I realized that it is way too easy for us to complain that things take too much time to be accepted. The reality is there are so many details that have to be taken into account and it takes many people to see them all. Everything needs to be backward compatible and it takes a lot of scrutiny and proposal iterations to reach a generally accepted form.
Overall, it was definitely a trip worth making, and I am looking forward to doing that again. I also encourage all of you that are interested in that and have the opportunity to take it.
For information about the progress in Issaquah see Herb Sutter’s Trip report: Fall ISO C++ standards meeting (Issaquah).
