"Yet C++ is also frequently reviled both by those who never use and by those who use it all the time." I was once listening to RMS speak at a conference. One g

"Yet C++ is also frequently reviled both by those who never use and by those who use it all the time." I was once listening to RMS speak at a conference. One guy got up and said that this was one of the n great talks he had been to.He mentioned that Stroustrup as another speaker who had impressed him upon which RMS said "You need to get your head checked". Sometimes a great hacker community can help overcome the shortcomings of a language. Trevor Blackwell makes that point here: http://www.tlb.org/faq.html http://www.tlb.org/faq.html. "Besides their intrinsic characteristics, languages define commmunities of programmers. You want to choose one that lets you communicate with good programmers, because you'll learn from them. They tend to prefer powerful languages like Python, Lisp, and C++. So for example, although Visual Basic is actually a powerful and complete language, few good programmers use it. C++, on the other hand, is a rather poorly designed language, but for historical reasons a lot of smart people use it so at least you'll be in good company."