There are parts of all languages that I find confusing, but I'm a little puzzled by the general criticism of C++ (e.g., the __getitem__ feature of Python seems

There are parts of all languages that I find confusing, but I'm a little puzzled by the general criticism of C++ (e.g., the __getitem__ feature of Python seems to be similar in spirit to operator overloading. Do people criticize Python too?). IMHO, C++ is an amazing extension to C which managed to increase productivity for those tasks for which C would have been the right choice (modulo non-standard compilers). If I were writing a performance-critical system-level program today, using C++ would be no brainer. You can fake a lot of what C++ offers with macros and function pointers in C, but lose type-safety and/or performance. I am very thankful to all the people who have brought C++ to the state it is in today.