I don’t necessarily disagree with the underlying point, but this it’s a weird change to comment on.

The complexity explosion in C++ is due to extra language features etc. not 3 extra, probably well documented, quality of life functions in the standard library.

std::unreachable is the most atypical “function” in this post, but from a code readability perspective, it is pretty clear what it does and it doesn’t really add any new concepts to the language (UB has always been a footgun).

Also, if you want to preserve backward compatibility, all you CAN do is add more abstractions and hope they are simpler to understand and cover the majority of the use cases that the old ones did.

While C++ is indeed a complex beast, mastering the whole of Java, C#, F#, Scala, Python, OCaml, Haskell in their latest versions, standard libraries and changes between major releases isn't any easier.

> I think -- I hope? -- we're seeing the death spiral of this language.

In a lot of metrics C++ has never been more popular. And given the direction of heterogeneous programming, C++ is here to stay.

> Solution: add more stuff!

In a lot of ways, yes, that is the solution.