C++ Community Chooses Best Libraries of the Year: 2024 Voting Results

C++ Community Chooses Best Libraries of the Year: 2024 Voting Results

The annual voting among C++ developers has concluded, and the community has named the best libraries that simplify development, improve performance, and enhance code safety. In 2024, against the backdrop of the active adoption of C++20 and C++23 standards, the winners reflect key trends: asynchrony, string formatting, JSON handling, and system programming. We tell you about this year's favorites and newcomers.

Winners in the main categories:

• Best library for asynchronous programming: Boost.ASIO — the perennial leader, providing cross-platform work with networking, timers, and signals. This year, Boost.ASIO received significant improvements in C++20 coroutine support, making it even more convenient for modern projects.
• Best library for string manipulation: fmtlib (formatting library). It has already become the de facto standard for data output. Version 10 introduced support for custom types and improved compile-time error handling.
• Best library for JSON: nlohmann/json — for its intuitive syntax and speed. The library is actively updated: in 2024, full support for JSON Schema Draft 2020-12 was added.
• Best library for system programming: SFML (Simple and Fast Multimedia Library). Despite its popularity in game development, SFML is also used for creating graphical interfaces and working with audio. This year, version 3.0 was released with improved support for OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan.

New names and surprises:

In the "Breakthrough of the Year" category, the community recognized the Google Benchmark library — a tool for code benchmarking. Developers appreciated its integration with CMake and automatic report generation. Also, for the first time, Magic Enum entered the top 5 — a library for enum reflection, simplifying serialization and debugging.

Why are these libraries important?

The community's choice reflects the real needs of the industry. Boost.ASIO and fmtlib are actively used in high-load systems, from game engines to financial platforms. nlohmann/json has become a standard for C++ microservices, and SFML for cross-platform applications. More than 5,000 developers took part in the voting, which is 30% more than last year.

What's next?

The voting organizers (C++ Alliance) have announced the creation of a "Hall of Fame" for libraries that receive the highest number of votes for three consecutive years. Already in 2025, they plan to expand the list of categories to include libraries for machine learning and GPU computing. Stay tuned for updates on the official C++ Alliance website.

Source: results of the C++ community voting (2024).