This chap isn't impressed

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/07/verity_stob_cplusplus/

There are some funny quotes in his other posts:
"The day they change the language name to ++C, that's the day I'll start taking pre-incrementing seriously."

I don't know, C++0x looks like a pretty distant reach at this point. I mean {}... seriously? Why not just automatically initialize it like most other sane languages at this point. There's no good reason not to. This is stupid.

It is stupid and pointless. Why can't it be automatic?

I vote pointless. In fact, I expect C and C++ to retreat to the inner sanctums of systems programming and other deep internal stuff — platforms are diverging and C/C++ sits at a suboptimal position in the application development hierarchy for 90% of the code for 99% of applications. C-like languages will thrive, but with either massively improved runtimes (C#, Objective-C) that ease the various binding/fragile base class/etc problems or in areas where code is short and performance is still the major objective (OpenCL, GLSlang/HLSL, device drivers). Even games have been following this path for years, with the C/C++ stuff doing graphics and physics and LUA-or-similar entrusted with all the interesting per-level stuff.

I'm sure it'll be a lengthy transition and C/C++ won't suddenly be irrelevant tomorrow, but I don't see any real worth in attempts to further extend C++ at this stage. Take what works and re-engineer the rest ala C# if you're going to do anything — damn backwards compatibility.

C# automatically initializes variables, making junk like {} useless. C++0x should do the same if its a serious language. But then you couldn't write major applications in it, so I don't know.

Former C programmers can take a hike then. If they like their ancient archaic crap, they can keep using it. Why limit usefulness of new languages because of the rare case where some masochistic C/asm programmer wants to control when their variable is initialized?

Some people can't work in C# or Python (for example: people who write drivers for hardware.)
I know next to nothing of C++0x, but if it is a new (improved?) tool available for them, I consider it a good thing.

I am sure that GCC will add a bunch of extentions that will allow you to write a mixture of C++98 and C++0x.

Depending on your definition of better. I define better as changing languages all together.

I don't know about you, but I haven't done much game programming at all. I've been using C# almost exclusively for a while now.

It's supposed to be an attempt to unify the syntax of object construction. You'd use it anytime except when existing constructors would interfere with added constructors. E.g

std::vector<int> vec{4}; //contains one element with value 4
std::vector<int> vec(4); //contains four elements with value 0

Where it is useful?

std::vector<int> vec(std::istream_iterator<int>(std::cin), std::istream_iterator<int>()); //that's called vexing
std::vector<int> vec{std::istream_iterator<int>(std::cin), std::istream_iterator<int>()}; //much better

There is absolutely no way I will be able to avoid c/c++ in my line of work. The problem with c++0x is that it is too little too late IMO. These things should have been included 10 years ago so I would have a hope of using them by now. By the time code-bases like ITK start accepting the changes I will be an old man.

I'm still trying to figure out why the hell you would ever want to write "auto someFunc() -> int {}" instead of just "int someFunc() {}" - my mind fails to produce any scenario where this would even be close to useful. It seems like they introduced syntax stupidities such as this (which is even worse than ={};) just for something to do because they ran out of intelligent ideas.