I completely agree, the interviewer is hardly impartial: he pushes Bjarne to admit what he'd like. Although I can't help thinking we have all been here before

I completely agree, the interviewer is hardly impartial: he pushes Bjarne to admit what he'd like. Although I can't help thinking we have all been here before. C++ despite using it for a over a decade still feels like a research project, the thing is Bjarne never admits failure in anything C++. I can't help thinking the build-a-better-C, by providing generic programming and OO hasn't met it's goal. C for all its faults is beautifully simple. Where C++ after almost 20 years still needs "fixes" to make it better. To me better is not adding more compiler syntax (that most earlier generic/oo languages have done without). Programmers, even good ones, need to get increasingly bogged down on how to instruct their compiler to do the correct thing. Most programmers I know want to get the solution finished, and aren't interesting on how to be clever with the compiler. This trying to shoehorn objects onto C seems mad considering all that's needed to interoperate with C is the ability to support C linkage. Why not just design a better C?