Similar experience.  I picked up a copy of TP 5.5 and finally had an easier way to build my &quot;ADT&quot;s (abstract data type library type code).<p>THEN, I got a copy of TC++ a few months or a year later.  WTF?!?<p>The light came on when I read Scott Meyer&#x27;s &quot;Effective C++&quot; book in 96 or so.  &quot;Effective&quot; meant &quot;not stepping on one of 50 or so common land mines&quot;.  I realized what a bad joke C++ was, and decided never to go back to it.<p>C is useful as a substitute for assembler, but not most applications.  Too bad we didn&#x27;t get to see more of Smalltalk in school in the 80s.  And maybe Scheme instead of just a little bit of Lisp.