So-called "modern C++" (basically C++11 and beyond) is really immensely more pleasurable to work with than C++03/C++98. The confluence of automatic type deduct

So-called "modern C++" (basically C++11 and beyond) is really immensely more pleasurable to work with than C++03/C++98. The confluence of automatic type deduction, closures, and move semantics turned C++ into the language that it really ought to have always been, given the vision of Alexander Stepanov's STL. I mean really, before lambdas, using the STL was often really clunky. But even before C++11, the main "killer features" of C++ has always been RAII (deterministic destruction of resources) and compile time duck typing (templates.) These features together have always made C++ an incredibly powerful language that lets you code at a high level of abstraction with zero runtime penalty (at the cost of longer compile times). Nowadays, C++ can be almost Pythonic in its expressiveness. But I agree that the most urgent problem facing C++ is huge compile-times, which often result from a combinatorial explosion of new types created by templates that instantiate other templates, etc.