I've been engineering videogames in C++ for almost 20years working on AAA games and I can tell you that modern C++ is not very appealing to the vast majority of our industry. Modern C++ it's overcomplicated and from what I can see all the best software engineers I met in my careen write very simple C++98 code, maybe a bit of C++11 but that's it. They keep it simple. They don't need a move constructor because they've been already clever enough to solve a prolbem from a different angle. Modern C++ is for experienced C++ developers and it's solving problems that experienced developers know already how to solve without all this extra complexity. And because of that it's keeping away young developers... This new C++ syntax is just a gimmick that we don't need. The C++ community seems it's feeding itself to create a new standard every couple of years. It's just disappointing...

> Modern C++ it's overcomplicated and from what I can see all the best software engineers I met in my careen write very simple C++98 code, maybe a bit of C++11 but that's it.

I'm sorry but this assertion does not pass the smell test.

Sticking with C++11 means you do not have std::make_unique, and any claim that these "best software engineers" not only fail to use smart pointers but also refuse to even consider instantiating a std::unique_ptr in a safe, standard way and for no reason at all is something that lacks any credibility.

> Modern C++ is for experienced C++ developers

It really isn't. "Modern" C++ is just the same old C++ with useful features that improve the developer experience (see aggregate initialization, for starters,nested namespace definitions, utf8 character literals, structured binding, etc) and don't require developers to resort to in-house trickery passed around through tribal knowledge to implement basic features (move semantics, constexpr, etc).

> It's just disappointing...

Speak for yourself. It's fantastic that people continue to improve the language and make everyone's life easier, instead of being stuck in the C++98 mud. Each and every single major standard release since C++98 brought huge productivity and safety improvements that everyone stands to benefit. Even standardizing stuff from Boost and the like is a major step forward.

It's totally fine that you personally prefer to not benefit from any of the improvements that sprung in the past two decades, but don't presume for a minute that you represent anyone beyond yourself when making Luddite-like claims.

> Sticking with C++11 means you do not have std::make_unique, and any claim that these "best software engineers" not only fail to use smart pointers

Pretty much every non-trivial C++ engine i've seen has its own equivalents for memory management. Even a game engine development book i bought in ~2001 (meaning it was written before then) had a chapter dedicated to implementing smart pointers.

Which doesn't mean that they are any better than the provided standard implementations.

They are there because it makes sense to have them. Now you don't have build and maintain your own ship.

> Which doesn't mean that they are any better than the provided standard implementations.

That standard implementation is a thin wrapper over malloc(). That standard malloc() is not necessarily good enough. The performance is not great, but worst of all when you have many small objects, they are scattered all over address space. Chasing many random pointers is expensive.

While it’s technically possible to use custom memory management with std::unique_ptr with that that second template argument with custom deleter, it complicates things. The code often becomes both simpler and faster when using custom smart pointers instead.

That’s not specific to videogames, applies to all performance-critical C++. These standard smart pointers are good for use cases with a small count of large long-lived objects. For large count of small things, the overhead is too large, people usually do something else instead.

> That standard malloc() is not necessarily good enough.

The operative word is "it enough".

Let's not fool ourselves by claiming that all memory allocations take place in hot paths, and that all conceivable applications require being prematurely optimized to the extreme because they absolutely need to shave off that cycle from an allocation.

Meanwhile people allocate memory in preparation of a HTTP request, or just before the application is stuck in idle waiting for the user to click on the button that closes the dialog box.

It makes absolutely zero sense to proselytize about premature optimization when no real world measurements are on the table.

Let’s not pretend all conceivable applications are, or should be, written in C++.

People mostly stopped using C++ to develop web servers which handle web requests, because they moved to Java, C#, PHP, Ruby, Python, etc. People mostly stopped using C++ to develop GUI apps which handle these buttons, because they moved to Java, C#, and now JavaScript/TypeScript.

What’s left for C++ is software (or sometimes individual DLLs consumed from other languages) which actually need it to achieve the required performance. Even despite the language is unsafe, low-level, and relatively hard to use which directly affects software development costs.

This is a discussion on C++.

> People mostly stopped using C++ to develop web servers which handle web requests, because they moved to Java, C#, PHP, Ruby, Python, etc.

I'm not sure you understood what I said, or thought things through.

By the way, the top performing web framework in the Tech Empower benchmark is a C++ framework which uses C++'s standard smart pointers.

https://github.com/drogonframework/drogon

Also, one of the most popular web frameworks for Python started off as an April Fools joke. I'm not sure what's your point.

Lastly, the main reason why C++ ceased to be the most popular choice in some domains was because it was during a very long time the most popular choice in some domains, and still remains one of the most popular choices. Some of the reasons why C++ dropped in popularity is the fact that some vendors decided to roll their own alternatives while removing support for C++. Take for instance Microsoft, which was once responsible for making C++ the only tool in town for professional software development. Since it started pushing C# for all sorts of web applications, multi-platform applications, and even desktop applications, and also pushing the adoption of those technologies as a basic requirement to distribute apps in its app store, developers can only use technologies that exist. But does that say anything about the merits of C++?