I think what's interesting is looking at the constraints around which a language evolves. A lot of the deep nastiness of C++ is related to C compatibility; but

I think what's interesting is looking at the constraints around which a language evolves. A lot of the deep nastiness of C++ is related to C compatibility; but C++ without C (++?) wouldn't have had even the awful tool support that it did; it would never, ever have taken off to the same degree. I'm not a C++ jock -- when I was getting started (1992), the pain/pleasure threshold was very different than it is today.