Concepts like integer overflow are definitely lost on some developers, which is why I cringe when I see relatively new programmers toying with a language like C

Concepts like integer overflow are definitely lost on some developers, which is why I cringe when I see relatively new programmers toying with a language like C++. They are probably better off using experimental side projects to hone their C++, while doing production code in the relative safety of scripting languages. Sure, you could argue something like hitting INT_MAX isn't likely with many data sets, but it's also a very difficult bug to find, so it shouldn't be there in the first place. I love scripting language bindings. They let you put programming wizards and new programmers on the same team, where only some parts require extreme care (e.g. a C++ core). The majority of the code, if bound to something like Python, becomes relatively safe, so things that "sound simple" actually can be simple.