I don't know much about hashmaps but the disadvantage with tombstones is if you add/remove a lot, then you have to rehash your map at some point right?
I really like tiny libs anyway, yours looks good, very readable :)
Great write up. It's common to add retry or reconnect mechanism to connections even there is no requirement. It's basically "restart your computer" to see if the issue disappears. So, it actually hides bugs for decades :)
Because C++ has almost all the possible features of the programming languages, so you find a subset to like in it. A language shines when it picks the correct subset of the features, not all.