I really do not like hiding the type. If you did not think carefully about the type of the underlying variable, you _really_ should not be using something as complex and subtle as an atomic operation. And I _really_ do not like that we would now have two _different_ ways to do atomic operations, one for C and one for C++. It is hard enough to learn one API, having two different ones, that's just stupid. Seriously. We have so many problems with our existing implementation of atomics: - They are very unclear on the essential aspect of memory barrier semantics. They do not provide read-read or write-write barriers. - It even confuse the memory barrier semantics - they call something "atomic store" when it is really a memory-barrier store (synced/locked store). They do not provide any atomic store that does not involve a full memory barrier (on platforms where that is possible). - The code is _completely_ impossible to read, with all the macro hell. Instead of a simple set of inline function definitions for each definition, they do macro magic that basically requires running the preprocessor to get any idea of what they are actually doing. - ... So, if people really want to spend time on improving my_atomic.h - why on earth would they waste their effort on something of as little importance as on whether code says atomic_add() or atomic_add32() ... :-( - Kristian.