C and C++ want people to use them, but make people pay for the standards. Sure, you can download a draft, but it's not guaranteed that's what's in the standard.

What is the point of a standard if you disable people from conforming to it?

And it costs $250 (without the resellers discounts).

I've tried for so long to come to terms with why this pay-wall exists but the defenders always climb the "Pay the developer. Hurr Durr" bandwagon. It isn't even paid to the devs. It's for ISO as an organization.

Fuck this model man.

When I was looking for the OPCUA spec I found it for like $200 per chapter. There are like 14 chapters. Then I signed up with an OPCUA foundation and found I could download it for free. Still confused about how that works. It cost zero to sign up.

If it is an ISO standard EU and Asian countries can only buy compliant products

You would be better off with a book by someone anyway. I bought the C++ 11 book by Stroustrup. He goes into detail explaining the standard. It is a lot cheaper anyway. I should probably pick up a copy of 17 or 20 now though.

@Demolishun I don't need explanations of the standard. I need THE standard.

I wonder, is the standard even required to be upholded as the holy grail or is it just a tool to make your C++ implementation "legally" compliant.

@3rdWorldPoison The former. Especially in C/C++, standards mean a lot.

@junon Maybe I'm still not experienced enough with the language to appreciate it :P