Bit of a quibble but I'm not sure I'd call that a "huge breaking change" given that that feature wasn't really implemented in the first place, let alone actually used.
It was a bad feature, as the two main C++ commercial products that make use of GC, namely C++/CLI and Unreal C++, were never taken into account while designing it, a good example how WG21 often does PDF driven design.
> C VLAs got dropped in C11, function prototypes changed meaning in C23, and K&R declarations were dropped from the standard.
Not so sure I'd call these huge breaking changes. They're breaking, sure, but I'd expect them to be trivial to fix in any existing codebase.
Maybe VLAs are a huge breaking change? Most code never used it due to no way at all to use them safely, so while it is a pain to replace all occurrences of them, the number of usages should be really low.
Breaking changes are breaking changes, even if it is only fixing a comma, someone has to spend part of their time making it compile again, which many times maps to actual money for people working at a company, their salary mapped into hours.
No disagreement there, but the context ITT was specifically about huge breaking changes. I consider those breaking changes, but not necessarily huge ones.
I recall a lot of grumbling about VB.Net. I think most of us are happy never to hear people bitch about VB again. .Net was feared to be a bait and switch to get people off of it and that definitely seems to have been the case.
While C#, F#, VB and C++/CLI were kept compatible, it doesn't help when the library stuff you want to call isnt' there any longer.
C++ removal of exception specifiers, GC API,
C VLAs got dropped in C11, function prototypes changed meaning in C23, and K&R declarations were dropped from the standard.
Java, already someone else mentioned.
D, the whole D1 => D2 transition, and Tango vs Phobos drama.