But i think a better way to go is Rust it also has the zero cost abstraction idea, has a superior type system, is really small and doesn’t include classes(no more inheritance etc.), But has traits + structs and Templates instead. It also includes a lot of safety. Sadly it doesn’t include compile time calculations yet.

@Dan: “And that first version of the C++ compiler was written in Assembler.. etc etc.. :)”

I understand the point, however, as a point of history, the first C++ compiler was not written in assembly language. See
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/105313/how-could-the-first-c-compiler-be-written-in-c

C++ has lots of libraries which is the only reason I use it but they don’t come with the language. Qt is probably the most complete general purpose C++ library. I use C++ for domain specific libraries like VTK & OpenCL for visualization, ITK for image processing, Seqan for genetics, …

” less extensive standard library” I will give you that.
it is too algorithmic and not app oriented, but hey exactly what boost is trying to fill in, but still short of what python,c#,Java etc. have

You my hero.

From the very beginning computers were and always have been just a tool. Does program accomplish it’s goals? Did programmer meet deadlines? The language used is unimportant when the bigger picture is understood. Sometimes that picture includes performance, sometimes correctness of code is very important. So programming is very much an engineering process.

C++ has a good learning curve. I started with PHP – moved to C++ and was amazed how EASY it is to write efficient code. If you mess up, you inform yourself and you can use the newfund intelligence source to enhance your abilities. You are not relying on somebody else to fix performance issues for you.

OUCH, guess that must have hit a nerve?