It is possible to write standard C++ with memory safety guarantees similar to Rust by the end of
14
Ṁ2452
2038
4%
2027
25%
2030
33%
2033
51%
2037

Requires specification in a standard (presumably CPP26/29/32, but a change in cadence or fork/alternative that is a formal standard would be acceptable) and usable by programmers in at least one open source implementation (eg gcc or clang, but something new/newly open source would qualify).

Question inspired by https://safecpp.org/ but it does not need to be this proposal or a derivative that is accepted and implemented to resolve to true.

Added: If 2027 is judged yes, so will 2030, 2033, and 2037. If 2030, also 2033 and 2037. If 2033, also 2037. I will trade.

Get Ṁ1,000 play money
Sort by:

Reactions from the ISO C++ standards committee https://x.com/seanbax/status/1836785155677012101

https://x.com/seanbax/status/1834435155173220802 (coauthor of proposal, person who has been working toward it for years) responding to question about how likely it is to get approved for c++26:

No chance. If the commercial conpiler vendors dove into this and we resolved the design issues and had multiple toolchains going, it could be deployed to mainstream users in 18-24 months and we could do standards work for 29. The design work has to come first.

bought Ṁ350 2027 NO

Soft deadline for getting new features into 26 is roughly jan 2025, and it's a very tall ask to get a memory safety feature completely hashed out by that time.

Added to description upon seeing 2030 at 59% and 2033 at 50%:

If 2027 is judged yes, so will 2030 and 2033. If 2030, so will 2033. I will trade.

bought Ṁ50 2037 NO

Also:

the "not by the end of 2033" option is superfluous, should be 100% - the value of "2033". Oh well, ignore, or take free mana when the above equation does not hold.

bought Ṁ100 2037 YES

Actually rather than have a superfluous option, I just changed "not by the end of 2033" to 2037. I was the only trader, so my loss for the good of the question!

No I don't know why I put 2037 rather than 2036. The tail gets an additional year!

p.s. it's silly to trade such that the invariant is broken: "If 2027 is judged yes, so will 2030, 2033, and 2037. If 2030, also 2033 and 2037. If 2033, also 2037" as it'll only lose you mana.

From the proposal (presumably optimistic, if everything goes well):

Everything in this proposal took about 18 months to design and implement in Circle. With participation from industry, we could resolve the remaining design questions and in another 18 months have a language and standard library robust enough for mainstream evaluation. While Safe C++ is a large extension to the language, the cost of building new tooling is not steep. If C++ continues to go forward without a memory safety strategy, that’s because institutional users are choosing not to pursue it; it’s not because memory safe tooling is “impossible” to build.