Hah! Yeah, that does seem sometimes like it must have been a deliberate goal, doesn't it? Got a good laugh out of that. The number of cycles wasted by C++ compilers fumbling toward solutions that would have been obvious in a better language (thousands of server-years per day where I work) is a legitimate ecological concern.
I know personally I'd spend a lot less time on HN if C++ compiled quickly enough that I didn't have time to context switch to something else while waiting for it to compile.
