I remember what scared me to death with C++ when I was using it with frequency was the potential to end-up with these horrible inheritance trees that could real

I remember what scared me to death with C++ when I was using it with frequency was the potential to end-up with these horrible inheritance trees that could really bungle a project in so many ways. If you didn't take the time to really, really, really think through your class hierarchy you could really shaft yourself in a big way. Bacause of this, as life went on I started to really appreciate the idea of composition vs. inheritance. For me C has always been an easy no-brainer go-to language to get things done, particularly so when performance was at stake. I've always thought that learning programming should start at the lowest possible level (yes, assembly), then move on to Forth, C and from there ideally Lisp before hitting Java for some OO love. With that kind of a foundation it's easy to learn and absorb just-about anything that comes your way.