What is the rationale for not having static constructor in C++?

Using the static initialization order problem as an excuse to not introducing this feature to the language is and always has been a matter of status quo – it wasn’t introduced because it wasn’t introduced and people keep thinking that initialization order was a reason not to introduce it, even if the order problem has a simple and very straightforward solution.

Initialization order, if people would have really wanted to tackle the problem, they would have had a very simple and straightforward solution:

//called before main()

int static_main() {

ClassFoo();
ClassBar();

}

with appropriate declarations:

class ClassFoo {
 static int y;
  ClassFoo() {
   y = 1;
  }
}

class ClassBar {
  static int x;
  ClassBar() {
   x = ClassFoo::y+1;
  }
}

So the answer is, there is no reason it isn’t there, at least not a technical one.