Programming · by Grace Parker · 2026-10-19

C++ futures part 1: building the mental model (Raymond Chen)

devblogs.microsoft.com

Raymond Chen starts a series on C++ futures and how to think about them. Async in C++ has always felt like three half-finished ideas. Are you using std::future, coroutines, or a library like asio/folly in real code?

25 sparks · 11 comments

Comments

Anna Gruber · 14 likes

coroutines with a good library (cppcoro or folly) are actually pleasant

Huy Le · 0 likes

once you figure out the lifetime stuff 😅

Ethan Brooks · 12 likes

raymond chen posts are always gold, the old new thing is a treasure

Midnight Coder · 1 likes

30 years of windows history lessons, love it

Rafael Almeida · 8 likes

the mental model part is what most tutorials skip. glad he's doing it properly

Ethan Brooks · 5 likes

agreed, people learn the syntax but not the model

Bilal Raza · 7 likes

std::future is basically unusable for real work, no continuations. asio all the way

Maia Brown · 12 likes

std::execution in C++26 should fix this, eventually, someday

Chloe Davis · 5 likes

senders/receivers have a learning curve the size of a cliff tho

Maya Williams · 1 likes

every time i do async in c++ i miss rust's tokio and go's goroutines

Solar River · 0 likes

and then rust people miss c++ templates lol