After going through several love-hate cycles in my career toward C++ I must say I have a kind of admiration for what the C++ authors are trying to achieve.

It took me a while to understand why every iteration of C++ brings so many (often Turing-complete or close) side effect horrors. The reason is that C++ is more than a language: it is part of an actually philosophical quest that language design is about.

It is about trying to bridge the language of the machines and the language of human abstractions as closely as possible. In itself it does not necessarily lead to the best language possible, but it explores an interesting limit.

One can use higher level languages like Haskel, Prolog or even a bit lower like Ruby or Python and code nice abstractions. By doing so, however, the programmer typically loses track of what the machine implementation will be.

C++ strives to be a language where you can still feel what the machine will actually implement while you code high-level abstractions.

That is their goal, that is their quest. In doing so there are many side-effects that pop up, but their effort is commendable.

That so many people still use it is impressive but, I think, irrelevant to the priorities they typically set.