The saving grace of C++ is that 80% of my complaints are really about the standard library rather than the language itself. I can replace the standard library w

The saving grace of C++ is that 80% of my complaints are really about the standard library rather than the language itself. I can replace the standard library with something else more consistent and modern without regard for legacy compatibility, and many people do. Most of the rest of my complaints could be addressed by jettisoning backward compatibility and switching to more sensible defaults. I realize this will never happen. C++ still has some unique strengths, particularly around metaprogramming compared to other popular systems languages. It also is pretty good at allowing you to build safe and efficient abstractions around some ugly edge cases that are unavoidable in systems programming. Languages like Rust are a bit too restrictive to handle some of these cases gracefully.