This is one thing I wish C++ advocates would stop bringing up. While it's technically true that the page count of the C++ spec is comparable to that of C# and J

This is one thing I wish C++ advocates would stop bringing up. While it's technically true that the page count of the C++ spec is comparable to that of C# and Java, not all pages are created equal. The C++ spec is incredibly dense, it's written in a very terse style and often packs as much information into a single sentence as other specs spend an entire paragraph on. Also, the Java spec in particular is typeset with much larger margins, a larger font, and generally more vertical white space than the C++ spec making it seem relatively bigger than it really is.