C++ casts ALSO perform runtime checks, just not all of them. As you've stated. And, to be clear, that behavior ALSO exists in C# and Java. You can absolutely 1

C++ casts ALSO perform runtime checks, just not all of them. As you've stated. And, to be clear, that behavior ALSO exists in C# and Java. You can absolutely 100% ignore the type system in Java and C# and its supported by the standard. Just like C++. So if that's your own standard for what is weak, then you must also admit that Java and C# are ALSO weakly typed. But clearly you don't believe that, so you have some sort of logic problem here. In my opinion, people see C++ differently because C++ code in the wild is fundamentally different. It's high performance and used in domains where that matters, so escape hatches are used more often than other langs. However IMO the strictness/weakness of a language comes from the language itself. And both C++ and Java/C# provide static checks + runtime type checks with escape hatches. The difference is that C++ code with raw pointers is (fairly) common.