Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started with C++ around '92, but you are right, C++ was already complex back then, but it was still manageable, you could, sort of, hold its larger picture entirely in your head and still had some elegance to it.
As a dissenting opinion from someone who has not quite 20 years of experience with C/C++ but 14, modern C++ is what brought me back to the language. The idioms allow me to use the language more functionally. More importantly, the STL is actually usable now and you can just code using it and std::algorithm without thinking of the nuts and bolts of move assignment and stuff at all. In the case where you need performanc…
C++ is precisely useful because it's a better C: it has a C-like subset, and works directly with C data structures and function call interfaces. Plus it has features to do that kind of programming in a safer, more managed way.
I would absolutely not use C++ for anything that isn't in the area of "this should be ideally written in C, but that would bring in undue difficulties, risks and time".
The more C++ moves away from its focus of being a language for writing low-levelish systems middleware, the more it loses its relevance.
> Also, you have a ref counted pointer thread safe pointer!
Had those in 1997 using draft ISO C++, thanks.