Indeed, I've had the same impression from large codebases in C++ - it surely looked like things worked in spite of all the effort to make it as complex and as

Indeed, I've had the same impression from large codebases in C++ - it surely looked like things worked in spite of all the effort to make it as complex and as inefficient as possible. (This, actually, may be a praise for C++ - you can write it as though it was Java and still get a fast program.)