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C++ Community Chooses Best Libraries of the Year: 2024 Voting Results
The annual C++ community vote for the best libraries of the year has concluded with the announcement of the winners. This year, competition was particularly high: over 120 projects competed for the title of best in 12 categories. We have gathered the key results and tell you which tools were recognized as the most useful for developers.
Winners in Main Categories
The voting took place on the C++ Herald platform with the participation of over 5,000 developers. Here are the top three in the main categories:
- Best General-Purpose Library — Boost 1.84. An extended set of utilities, algorithms, and containers that has been the de facto standard for over 20 years. This year, the community especially noted improved support for coroutines and modules.
- Best Formatting Library — fmtlib (fmt) 10.2. A fast and safe alternative to std::cout and printf. The library received the award for integration with C++20 and a new date formatting system.
- Best Logging Library — spdlog 1.13. An asynchronous logger that outperformed competitors in speed and ease of configuration. Developers praised its multithreading support and minimal memory consumption.
New Categories and Unexpected Winners
Two new categories were added this year. In the "Best Networking Library" category, Boost.Asio won by a large margin — it was updated to version 1.30, adding support for WebSocket and HTTP/2. In the "Breakthrough of the Year" category, first place went to nlohmann/json 3.11 — intuitive JSON handling that won the hearts of even novice developers.
The community also recognized the Catch2 3.5 library as the best for testing — its flexibility and support for Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) are considered exemplary.
Why This Matters for Developers
The community's choice is not just a formality. Winners receive additional funding, sponsorship support, and attention from major companies. For example, after last year's victory, fmtlib was integrated into the C++23 standard library. This year, it is expected that Boost.Asio may be included in the next C++26 standard.
For C++ developers who follow news on pythonlib.ru, these libraries are a must-have. They save hours of development time, improve code safety, and simplify the transition to new language standards.
Quick List of Recommended Libraries
If you want to quickly update your toolkit, here are the 2024 winners worth installing:
- Boost — a universal set for any task.
- fmtlib — modern string formatting.
- spdlog — a fast and reliable logger.
- nlohmann/json — working with JSON without headaches.
- Catch2 — next-generation unit testing.
The voting is over, but development doesn't stop. Stay tuned for updates on pythonlib.ru — we will prepare detailed guides on installing and using each of the winning libraries.
