I think language has a lot to do with it. To do the same thing in Python, Ruby, Scheme or whatever there is just less to think about. This frees up your brain

I think language has a lot to do with it. To do the same thing in Python, Ruby, Scheme or whatever there is just less to think about. This frees up your brain to think about algorithims and little else. C++ is jammed with distractions. It's not that dynamic languages make a problem super easy, but they do help quite a bit.