std::begin suffers from the same problem and will stay relevant for longer. The cppreference.com docs specifically mention the "using trick"[1], so it seems to

std::begin suffers from the same problem and will stay relevant for longer. The cppreference.com docs specifically mention the "using trick"[1], so it seems to be an established pattern now. It's still ridiculous - calling a function should be easy :( [1] http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/iterator/begin http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/iterator/begin