I've seen this complaint a lot, but I don't get it. For C++, the system package manager (yum, apt, pacman) seems sufficient to install most anything I've ever

I've seen this complaint a lot, but I don't get it. For C++, the system package manager (yum, apt, pacman) seems sufficient to install most anything I've ever needed. Are you programming under Windows? My biggest complaints about C++ generally revolve around all the inconsistencies / special cases, and I believe these are mostly in the name of backwards compatibility. For any of the major compilers: - Integer literals are 32 bits, even on 64 bit platforms. You almost always want a ssize_t, but you get an int, and int is almost always 32 bits. (let's dodge the religious war about unsigned vs signed) - String literals are basically const char star pointers, but you should hold them in a string class. - Even the syntax for declaring a variable is a total mess. Depending on details about foo (initializer_list, POD type, explicit constructors, etc), there are a lot of special cases in the following: foo x; foo x(); foo x(1); foo x(1, 2); foo x{}; foo x{1}; foo x{1, 2}; foo x = {}; foo x = { 1 }; foo x = { 1, 2 }; foo x = foo(); foo x = foo(1); foo x = foo(1, 2); auto x = foo(); auto x = foo(1); ... For some of those, you can't even know what's really happening unless you know the specific implementation of the type/class. And as a special bit of trivia, one of those doesn't even declare a variable. - There are a lot of special cases and non-obvious idioms around declaring constructors and assignment operators. I think it's too much to remember all the rules, so most everyone is forced to find a subset of the language out of necessity.