1. Agree 2. Agree 3. Agree 4. I don't use vector<int>::size_type and I don't use decltype(sz) throughout the rest of the function. I use size_t and let the c

1. Agree 2. Agree 3. Agree 4. I don't use vector<int>::size_type and I don't use decltype(sz) throughout the rest of the function. I use size_t and let the compiler give me an error if size() happens to return a different type or, if when making use of sz, types get mixed. 5. That's a little too anecdotal and 'appeal to authority' for my liking. The big question, I suppose, is defining guidelines for when auto helps readability and when it hurts it. My experience has been that it is best to default to no auto and only use auto after trying the non-auto way first. Iterators and template-heavy containers are great instances where auto helps. In our codebase I can't think of another situation in which auto would be useful. We also don't have heavy template usage outside of containers. If your code has templates everywhere then I can imagine the number of times auto is an improvement in readability would be larger. There have been exceptionally few times where I have jumped into someone else's code and said "wow, their heavy use of auto has made this easier to read and understand".