I have to agree that even thought STL is extremely powerful, it makes program extremely verbose. But, in my opinion, the real reason C++ code seems so verbose

I have to agree that even thought STL is extremely powerful, it makes program extremely verbose. But, in my opinion, the real reason C++ code seems so verbose is because of the lack of closures. In C++, when you need one, you have 2 choices: either manually coding everything that would be in the closure or create a totally new function. In fact, in the new c++2k10, it could be interesting to have a STL-like but with closures instead.. so one can do: some_sequence.sort_by(_1 > _2); or: foreach(sequence, cout << _1 << endl); that's, again in my opinion, way better than: for (int i = 0; i < sequence.size(); i++) { cout << sequence[i] << endl; } and again still better than: for (list<int>::size_type i = 0; i < sequence.size(); i++) { etc..}