Yeah, I realize my view on this is a bit skewed. A lot of the examples people give where C++ is still justified are things that I have done in my career - imag

Yeah, I realize my view on this is a bit skewed. A lot of the examples people give where C++ is still justified are things that I have done in my career - image processing, video editing, rendering software, CAD software, solving large sparse matrix systems, etc. On the other hand, there is a reason why native apps are popular on the iPhone. Likewise, some games are programmed in high-level languages, but the performance advantage of C++ keeps it dominant in games. Between games and mobile devices, I'd say C++ isn't going anywhere any time soon. C++ can indeed be very bloated, like you say. On the other hand templates do allow for code reuse without the function call overhead.. I believe std::sort is faster than qsort. For me, if there was another language that was as well supported as C++ but allowed higher-level structures and programming methods, I'd be very much in favor of it. For now it looks like new versions of C++ are the closest there is. Nobody really likes C++ for its elegance, it's just a very practical choice.