You're post nicely summarizes the dual nature of the evolution fo the C++ standard: it gets more complex in certain ways, so the language hopefully gets simpler

You're post nicely summarizes the dual nature of the evolution fo the C++ standard: it gets more complex in certain ways, so the language hopefully gets simpler in other ways. In think the GP was correct in pointing out that the ways in which the language is getting more complex is a problem for implementations of the compiler and/or the standard C++ library. You may be correct that the GP was unfairly calling the committee "eager" to make the language more complex. But perhaps we can agree that the language is becoming more complex, and that the complexity comes at a cost.