alt Hacker NewsEverybody has their own ideas of what they want from Contracts. C++26 contracts are trying to get a minimal system that everybody can agree on. The current contracts are not good enough for anybody who wants them - but it is good enough that they can start figuring out the details of making all the different factions happy.
C++26 contracts are written by people with experience in ADA/SPARK. While we don't have experience in C++ contracts, there is plenty of experience elsewhere. I find it odd that the paper didn't mention Spark at all!
The criticism that it is experimental in all compilers is a fact that can never be anything else. Chicken and egg - nobody will make this non-experimental until it is in the standard. There have many small scale experienements with contracts - enough to agree we want to use this on a larger scale but we need it in the standard first.
> The current contracts are not good enough for anybody who wants them -
This is a recurring pattern across large changes to c++. Modules and coroutines both are great examples of this.
> but it is good enough that they can start figuring out the details of making all the different factions happy.
I don’t think there’s really a plan to make the factions happy, there’s a plan to get X in, say it’s in and then ignore any actual criticism in favor of “it was the best we could do” while pointing at the other groups for not accepting the massive flaws.