Indoctrination: perhaps it is, but I don't think so, since other people make largely the same distinction, as witnessed by a series of articles on wikipedia (ht

Indoctrination: perhaps it is, but I don't think so, since other people make largely the same distinction, as witnessed by a series of articles on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_programming_language#Previous-generation_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_programming_l...). Although they have a slightly different definition of 4GL than the one I used. Ultimately Turing-completeness means there is no difference in what you can achieve with various languages. What matters are other things: the convenience of getting the work done, performance, etc. In my experience Pascal and C++ really do differ significantly, with C++ allowing you to automate a hell of a lot more than Pascal would. I disagree that GC is a more meaningful step forwards than, say, structured programming - this is something that is now so pervasive that it is no longer recognized for the revolution that it really was. GC is just one method of freeing memory, but it's not the only one; C++'s RAII does the same, and tracks any resource you care for, not just memory. I totally agree on the importing though. Arguably vcpkg has been a game changer in that sense. Programming 20 years ago wasn't all that bad, really. Figuring something out usually meant reading a book. There were fewer useful libraries around and they were less capable, but on the other hand, they also weren't as ridiculously complex as today's libraries sometimes are. And I'll readily admit that C++ informs my comments ;-) I mean, I've been writing C++ since 1996 or so, and for most of that, pretty much full time...