C++ isn’t C and has different structure semantics. Members are initialized in the order defined, which means you can write struct foo { int a = 0;

C++ isn’t C and has different structure semantics. Members are initialized in the order defined, which means you can write struct foo { int a = 0; int b = a+1; } If the compiler just did the initialization in the order of declaration, regardless of the order in the initialization list this would not do what you expect: struct obj { int a; int b; } int ival = 0; auto o = obj {.b = ++ival, .a = ival}; o.a would not equal o.b. I would like to have the initialization syntax of C because then one could reorder elements (say for packing reasons) and the designated initialization would “just work”…except it wouldn’t. C++ designated initialization does buy you two things: 1- documentation, but more importantly 2- if you do reorder a struct or class data members the compiler will warn you that your initialization lists are now invalid rather than silently failing. I don’t know how to even find them all in a large code base any other way!