Some of the complexity of C++ comes from it doing hard things, some is in part a consequence of heroic efforts at backwards compatibility. There are areas of the language that most people stay away from or use in very constrained ways like multiple inheritance that are unlikely to be deprecated for backwards compatibility reasons but in my many years of professional C++ development multiple inheritance has never caused practical difficulties for me precisely because everybody stays away from it except for pure abstract interfaces.
> C++ has a standard which contains extremely precise descriptions of how things work which is more than can be said for many languages.
(0) Most programming languages don't set the bar very high.
(1) You missed the “short” part. The C++ standard is already pretty long, and it isn't even written in a form that makes it possible to prove things about C++ programs by consulting the standard.
> How many other languages are there that have three major compiler and standard library implementations with almost no common code yet which all manage to be largely compatible (able to compile the same code and agree on the meaning)?
I can think of at least four: Standard ML, Common Lisp, C, Java.
> Some of the complexity of C++ comes from it doing hard things,
In unintelligent ways. For example:
(0) Macro, pardon my French, template expansion as a generic programming tool is super dumb. Better alternatives were known in the 70's.
(1) C++ classes are very poor abstract data types: You need arcane language design hacks like `friend` to abstract over two or more types at once.
(2) C++ classes are also very poor object constructors: The language has no type for “all objects that have methods foo, bar, qux” (à la OCaml or Go).
> some is in part a consequence of heroic efforts at backwards compatibility.
Most of it.
And yet C++ has better support for generic programming than most mainstream languages and it continues to improve. What's a language you think does generic programming 'right'?
> (1) C++ classes are very poor abstract data types: You need arcane language design hacks like `friend` to abstract over two or more types at once.
I don't really understand this comment. C++ has good support for static / compile time ADTs (the STL is very much built around the idea) and also supports 'runtime' ADTs through interfaces. In neither case is friend needed to abstract over types.
> (2) C++ classes are also very poor object constructors: The language has no type for “all objects that have methods foo, bar, qux” (à la OCaml or Go).
Static polymorphism in C++ currently relies on duck typing but this is what the Concepts TS is addressing. A major benefit of that will be improved error messages and a better generic programming experience.
