Scott Meyers, author of the Effective C++ books, writes about C++ language details, backward compatibility, and book errata.
Commenters recommend Effective Modern C++ as entertaining, cite his post on breaking backward compatibility, and note he has retired as a C++ expert.
CloudFlare remade their primary reverse proxy in Rust and had so few development issues, they ended up finding kernel bugs instead when problems arose. I've worked on projects with non-trivial C++ codebases for a variety of companies, large and small, and with some excellent developers who are far more skilled than I likely will ever be.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/how-we-built-pingora-the-proxy-that-connects-cloudflare-to-the-internet/
A non-trivial C++ codebase with that kind of track record is so rare as to be unheard of, though many can approach it with the various sanitizers plugged into the dev workflow after the fact.
C++ has improved dramatically over the last fifteen years, but a lot of stuff simply can't be fixed without breaking backward compatibility, which just isn't going to happen.
We've had enough time elapse to see the related rates of CVEs posted for C++ and Rust apps over the last few years. It's not even close.
It is absolutely possible to have bugs in a Rust app due to logic error or memory leak. But C++ has those same limitations and so many more unless you tack on a host of add-on analysis tools and still you end up with a result that is not as safe as Rust.
Write a web app server in Rust? Sure. As long as I know the problem space, have the dev time allocated, and the need for that efficiency is clear.
Write it in C++? Hell no. Not ever again. Not in a million years. Even if the need for efficiency is demonstrated, I have far less confidence in…
You could be Scott Meyers, write:
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1992. Effective C++: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs.
1995. More Effective C++: 35 New Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs.
1998. Effective C++, Second Edition: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs.
2001. Effective STL: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of the Standard Template Library.
2005. Effective C++, Third Edition: 55 Specific Ways to Improve Your Programs and Designs.
2010. Overview of The New C++ (C++11)
2010. Effective C++ in an Embedded Environment
2014. Effective Modern C++: 42 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of C++11 and C++14
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and you would not be able to understand modern C++ anymore...
"The Errata Evaluation Problem"
http://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-errata-evaluation-problem.html
"As you may know, I retired from active involvement in C++ at the end of 2015, and in the ensuing two and a half years, I’ve forgotten enough details of the language that I am no longer able to properly evaluate bug reports regarding the technical aspects of my books. C++ is a large, intricate language with features that interact in complex and subtle ways, and I no longer trust myself to keep all the relevant facts in mind. As a result, all I can do is thank you for your bug report, because I no longer plan to update my books to incorporate technical corrections. Lacking…
> I see that you have not kept up.
I have not (C++14 onwards was roughly where I started paying less attention), and that was partly my point. C++ has gone through dramatic change, and if I'm going to go through that dramatic change, I might as well do it with a language that has modern features and safety built in, and doesn't require extra boilerplate to do it.
Looking up the rule of zero, it seems there's still some debate about whether it's a good thing or not [0] (don't know if it's been resolved yet), and it still doesn't preclude you from knowing about the rule of 5 and the side-effects of declaring or not declaring certain operators/constructors/destructors.
> As the language gets more capable, the code you write gets simpler.
> I don't think that is happening in Rust.
This happens quite often in Rust, see for example error handling and the evolution of the ? operator, and the recent addition of async/await, and unlike c++, as the language gets more capable the changes required in terms of coding style and updating your mental model of how things work is usually not so dramatic.
0: http://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2014/03/a-concern-about-rule-of-zero.html
Scott Meyers was the go-to reference for "expert" C++ knowledge for over twenty years, he retired after his C++14 books came out and a mere two years later he couldn't even keep up with the language to make technical corrections.
C++ is a large, intricate language with features that interact in complex and subtle ways, and I no longer trust myself to keep all the relevant facts in mind. As a result, all I can do is thank you for your bug report, because I no longer plan to update my books to incorporate technical corrections. Lacking the ability to fairly evaluate whether a bug report is valid, I think this is the only responsible course of action.
https://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-errata-evaluation-problem.html
Scott Meyers has an Introduction: http://www.artima.com/shop/overview_of_the_new_cpp
He's also writing a new book that's available in Rough Cuts from O'Reilly that covers C++11/14:
http://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2014/06/effective-modern-c-status-report.html and has given a talk covering some of the same ground: http://vimeo.com/97318797
Herb Sutter has "Elements of Modern C++ Style": http://herbsutter.com/elements-of-modern-c-style/ and has given several talks, such as http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/2-661
Finally, you can't really beat Stroustrup's book: http://www.amazon.com/The-Programming-Language-4th-Edition/dp/0321563840
> has few surprises
C++ has few surprises? This is from Scott Meyers, author of several books on the intricacies of C++:
> I no longer plan to update my books to fix technical errors.It's not that I'm too lazy to do it. It's that in order to fix errors, I have to be able to identify them. That's something I no longer trust myself to do.
He then goes on to explain how the language is so complex, that in two years he has already forgotten enough of the gotchas to trust himself. This is far short of a language with no surprises.
[0] https://scottmeyers.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-errata-evaluation-problem.html?m=1