Go look at herb sutter's guru of the week articles, and consider how many C++ programmers can actually solve them. Then consider c++ has gotten even more comple

Go look at herb sutter's guru of the week articles, and consider how many C++ programmers can actually solve them. Then consider c++ has gotten even more complex in the past 9 years since he last published a gotw. The main problem is that every c++ programmer has their favorite little bit of complexity in the language, and that favorite bit is different for everyone. So you end up with a codebase sprinkled with the full spectrum of language complexity if you're working with a large team, meaning you need to understand all of it if you want to understand the codebase generally. At least with complex libraries, the complexity can be safely hidden behind the API. Not so with complex languages, at least in my experience.