Not just too many. But inconsistent ones, hard to use ones and badly designed ones. std::unordered_map anyone? The iterator-based APIs are just cumbersome and e

Not just too many. But inconsistent ones, hard to use ones and badly designed ones. std::unordered_map anyone? The iterator-based APIs are just cumbersome and error-prone to use, etc... it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot by forgetting to explicitly implement specific constructors, or by passing the wrong iterator (like begin() vs end()) to an STL template. The C# specification isn't significantly smaller than the C++ one (can't check the exact length right now) but the language is still much easier to understand, even if it has really hairy corner-cases like the difference between readonly fields and normal fields' generated IL or the logic for defensive copies. Most programmers don't have to care, and even if you do, it's not a nightmare to test or experiment with. In C++, I kind of feel I'm trying to squeeze water out of a stone. And even with the huge standard library, basic things are missing from it like a string startswith.