P2590R2, Explicit lifetime management (PR106658)
Nearly all zero-copy code that deals with external I/O buffers looks something like:
std::unique_ptr<char[]> buffer = stream->read();
if (buffer[0] == FOO)
processFoo(reinterpret_cast<Foo*>(buffer.get())); // undefined behavior
else
processBar(reinterpret_cast<Bar*>(buffer.get())); // undefined behaviour
Up until Java 8, they would release once features were complete. But that meant there were years between the 7 and 8 release and even more years between the 8 and 9 release.
The industry had gotten into the habit of always running old versions of Java (my company was on 6 for an uncomfortable amount of time. But others have had it worse).
More frequent smaller releases has gotten companies more into the habit of updating frequently which also, very helpfully, gives devs new features frequently.
It used to be slower and I've spent way too much time working around C++ bugs in GCC 2.95
(The fact that I remember the problematic version is telling :)