Has C++ jumped the shark?

The author says he is content with C++ the way it is, yet he bemoans the good deal of time between major changes in the standard.

This is a little inconsistent. As a language that takes a long time to master, changing fundamental features of the language every 3rd year, for instance, would be a bit difficult to keep up with. Furthermore, the niche C++ lives in isn't one that needs to change every year. For some users, language stability and backwards compatibility are key, and with things like Boost, additions to C++ can be tried out in the wild for many years before being standardized (as many features slated for the newest standard were).

I've written in C++ professionally almost 12 years (17 years counting College), and in my opinion it is a shame how the language has not evolved properly.

Unsolved things:

- Unified C++ ABI call for making shared libraries without worrying about compiler manufacturer or version.

- Massive bloat. Take a look to the Boost libraries and cry.

- Poor debugging tools for templates (debugging templates it is crazy, and the promise of easy template debugging is almost a decade old).

Ridiculous things (in my opinion):

- Obsession for doing everything in "user-land" (e.g. source code templates) instead of built-in abstractions at object code-generation time instead of compile-time.

- Willing to introduce functional programing in the language, when, in my opinion, it makes more sense just to interface with true functional code (e.g. via SBCL).

C++ hour will come, with a non-bloated, system-software capable, "better than C", which could be labeled "simple C++", as in "simple English".

Don't make C++ into some fly by night whore language like Perl.

C++ is the only language I'm aware of where every extension made to the language is careful to only affect compilation time/complexity, while preserving the speed and operational semantics of the code at runtime. This makes it perfect for some domains, e.g. console game development, where the speeds required are only attainable by dicking around with pointers in C, but people want to use better abstractions than C is capable of. So no, continuing to add those extensions is not wasted effort; we'll still be learning and using them long into the future.

Your complaints seem focused on poor implementations and not the language itself. You don't want C++ language evolution, you want tool support evolution.

Also, as far as I know, most compilers were settling on a fairly standardized IA64 ABI, even for other platforms. The problem gcc had, last I checked, was after every release, they found a bug in the implementation and fixing it made the next release incompatible, but the goal was to be interoperable.