&gt;&gt; Looking at &quot;modern&quot; C++ makes me angry. I wasted so much time learning all of this incidental complexity that just gets in the way of software development.<p>C++ was a huge part of my life as a developer back in the late 80&#x27;s and early 90&#x27;s. I used it. I taught it to other developers at major corporations. I once met Bjarne at a conference and he signed my copy of the ARM. It wouldn&#x27;t make sense to view all of that period as wasted time. C++ was the best tool for a lot of tasks for a long time. It was the most powerful and expressive implementation of OOP (imo) at a time when we were just beginning to understand higher levels of abstraction in program structure. Yes, we&#x27;ve moved on, and it would be strange if we hadn&#x27;t. I don&#x27;t see any reason to regard the path we&#x27;ve traveled as a waste, though.