Originally Posted by
phantomotap
O_o
You also have "Boost". The thing is, "Boost" is a great library; except that it totally isn't a library. Many dozens of different groups have worked on different libraries using the same or similar standard set by early "STL" implementations and the standard library as a foundation for moving forward. As "Boost" became a thing, "Boost" grew by absorbing many libraries. (I think recommended libraries to be distributed as part of "Boost" is still open to the public developers site.) "Boost" became massive. The C++ library is already very large, and many people wanted to include most all of "Boost" or similar in the future standard. "Boost" has a permissive license, but some vendors absolutely could not have just shipped "Boost", and even as a library you get the same sort of collision issues as above. Of course, a lost of people didn't want to include but a few scraps from "Boost". How much and where to add was just a ridiculously complex question.
Of course, politics and feature creep is also why the next standard has a shorted development cycle. The core changes in C++11 were contentious for a lot of reasons, but a lot of the core changes in C++14 are simply logical continuation of the C++11 features making them less problematic. You also have a standard committee who is more wary and tired of the political problems which arose due to the long wait so they intend a more rapid cycle simply to put the rubber seal, so to speak, on fixes and extensions as they evolve so that competing implementations have less time to become ingrained.
Soma
