I used to be a C++ programmer. I was good at it. I could do advanced template magic. I understood multiple inheritance and used it correctly, for the right purpose. I literally had dreams in C++.

Then I started using Java, and realised that I could be 5x as productive with far fewer headaches chasing down yet another linker error with some unintelligible error message.

What do you mean __malloc is undefined!? How could it possibly be missing? It was there a minute ago! I'm linking the standard library already, so what exactly do you want me to do about it, Mr C++ Compiler!?

Then I discovered IntelliJ IDEA, and I swear that I felt like the skies had opened up, there was a beam of light shining upon me, my spirits were lifted, and I could hear the voice of God saying: "Fear not! For now you can make changes globally and ye can rest assured that this will not break thy code!"

And then along came C#, which was just-like-Java, but with another 2x boost in productivity from all the built-in stuff that Java was missing, the language niceties, and the removal of the boilerplate. It has made me so happy over the years. Nearly two decades of effortless productivity.

I mean, seriously, how ridiculously awesome and simple is the "async" keyword!? It's like magic! I love it. LINQ is neat. The debugger is awesome. IntelliTrace is nifty. I could go on.

At one point recently I was forced to use C++ to write just a few hundred lines of code. It was physically painful. The language is a quagmire of footguns. The code I wrote was trivial string processing code, yet despite using only std::string it still somehow managed to crash.

I decided right then and there that I'm never going back to C++. Never! It's not worth it. My sanity, nay, my very soul deserves better.