We know how to write bad code: litter our programs with casts, macros, pointers, naked new and deletes, and complicated control structures. Alternatively (or additionally), we could obscure every design decision in a mess of deeply nested abstractions using the latest object-oriented programming and generic programming tricks. Then, for good ...

C++ faces two challenges: Helping programmers address the most demanding tasks in terms of performance, scale, and dependability. It must also help programmers be productive writing ordinary maintainable code. There is much more "ordinary code" than there is performance-critical code. Thus, C++ must make simple tasks simple while not getting ...