What's wrong with C++ can ironically be summed up by how a C++ (or C) compiler would parse 'C++'. If the value of C++ were accessed at that line, a temporary wo

What's wrong with C++ can ironically be summed up by how a C++ (or C) compiler would parse 'C++'. If the value of C++ were accessed at that line, a temporary would be generated to access the original C value, and then after the line C would be incremented. The idea is that most other languages are ++C. or ++A. The operation isn't straddled across two lines. Backwards compatibility with another language (C) isn't so important. And all the language features aren't generated implicitly without a real clear idea about the design (i.e., via temporaries). On the other hand, it is possible to program in something like ++C -- no temporaries -- by consciously going through and picking which features you like in C++, and not waiting for them to influence your design in some weird way (hence these types of posts about C++, and how different programmers have different takes on the language -- and different tools, moc, etc.). That is, if you want to write really elegant C++ code, you have to write it with a vengeance. It's not orthogonal really like Python or Ruby. It's much more like Perl. Just as the compiler is generating unnecessary cycles by creating that temporary (9/10), so are the C++ design paradigms often very overlapping and if you're not careful and don't understand them in detail -- they'll create a lot of unnecessary design cycles. But I think with the right tools and the right focused perspective, it's still one of the best languages. It's not forgiving -- and sometimes it's almost misleading -- I mean from the very beginning, you'd think if you wanted simply to increment an integer or an object semantically you'd just foo++ -- but that'd usually be wrong. But the redeeming part about C++ is that all languages make these mistakes. All languages, in trying to improve on their predecessors, make limiting choices that are imperfect and at some point will be optimized or revised in the future. The beauty, if you can call it that, of C++ -- is that because of its performance bent, it doesn't force you to choose any of its features which aren't already in C.