I have always thought that C++ took the wrong route here. Backward compatibility can be solved via a compiler flag too. So the language can evolve, and deprecat

I have always thought that C++ took the wrong route here. Backward compatibility can be solved via a compiler flag too. So the language can evolve, and deprecate older sub-awesome solutions, while allowing people to still use that via a "--my-code-still-uses-feature-x-and-i-dont-want-to-update" compiler flag. You could have deprecated : - #includes and have a decent mechanism - std::pair when you introduce std::tuple - perhaps new when you have make_shared and make_unique - etc etc. There's also a gentle push towards the more recent solutions as at one point compiler vendors will not maintain these flags forever because it's no longer part of the language.