C++11’s main domain is systems programming. A system that does anything interesting is made up of components and its complexity emerges from the interaction of those components. Software engineering is about managing complexity, and C++11 helps you manage that complexity by offering you multiple programming styles¹. As programmers, we choose which style best reduces the complexity of expressing the system’s constraints. One size doesn’t fit all.

This is my ad-hoc process whenever I’m in my design mode:

1. Imagine a new programming language that does what you need. Don’t limit the syntax to C++11 – consider constructs from other languages or that don’t even exist.
2. Imagine short sequences of actions written in that language that achieves the main goals of the system.
3. Break down those actions into primitives – verbs and nouns that can be composed in any manner of sentences.
4. Read up on C++11 and keep an eye out for language features that look like those primitives – eg, operator overloading, lambdas, return type deduction, variadics.
5. Consider any similarities between primitives and work out if the differences between the similar primitives can be figured out during compile time by the compiler, or can only be figured out at runtime.
6. If it can be figured out during compile time, consider using templates.
7. If using templates, consider using preprocessor macros that improve readability and usability of using templates.