I used to sit next to a member of the C++ standards committee. He was quite open that he didn't fully comprehend the abstract machine and had to rely heavily on

I used to sit next to a member of the C++ standards committee. He was quite open that he didn't fully comprehend the abstract machine and had to rely heavily on documentation. And as you'd expect he's a wizard at C++. There are a lot of great things you can say about C++, but that it's easy to understand is not one of them.