If there is a feature that could be misused, it will be misused. It does not matter what the rationale behind the committee's decision was. This is quite a nar

If there is a feature that could be misused, it will be misused. It does not matter what the rationale behind the committee's decision was. This is quite a narrow-minded line of thinking. You're saying "Feature X is should be excluded because of <possible consequence>". But we can say the converse about this same feature: "Feature Y should be included because <possible benefit>". Every programming language feature ever has had its pros and cons, and every language designer makes tradeoffs deciding which features to include and which to exclude.[1] You also most likely overestimate the practical unreadability of the source code. IDEs are (or will be) smart enough to deduce and display the type of an auto declared variable[2] when you want it. For short functions, it will be blindingly obvious what the auto-declared return type of a function is. Using auto will vastly improve readability by reducing textual noise when a function returns (1) heavily templated expressions, (2) any type within a deeply-nested namespace, (3) any type with a long name, or especially (4) combinations of the previous three (e.g. std::vector::const_iterator< std::pair<std::string, double> >). Complicated types are a common issue in languages with static type systems[3]. I could go on. There are tons of use-cases where auto will help out. The biggest complaint I have is that you can auto-declare the return type of methods that return private variables from a class (unless I'm mistaken; I haven't actually tried it). This pokes leaky holes in your class's encapsulation, forming dependencies between external code and your class's private, internal implementation (although this may be possible through template magic...). The barbarians are already at the gate. Which side are you going to pick? Oh, cut the drama. Every language has some sort of a style guide, and C++ programmers are already used to following a style guide and programming with discipline. One more feature with a few downsides and a number of benefits is not going to make a difference, and is totally in line with its philosophy[1]. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B#Philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B#Philosophy 2: http://stackoverflow.com/q/19625115 http://stackoverflow.com/q/19625115 3: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/10448 https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/10448