Well I think the idea is that it is a good general metric which should average out over thousands of pages. Just because one section of the Java language spec i

Well I think the idea is that it is a good general metric which should average out over thousands of pages. Just because one section of the Java language spec is wordier than the corresponding one in the C++ language spec does not mean it holds for the entire document. But I concede the point of complexity; the C++ spec is no doubt more dense. I just don't think it deserves to always be singled out as the most overly-complex/bloated language. The difference is not as big as the cliche would have people believe. Also, the article is about adding to the standard library, which is much smaller than Java's and .Net's, so invoking bloat is probably not appropriate in the context of the article.