If we can compare C++'s complexity to Python's, then C++ has lost its way. You're saying the same thing as the article and my comment, that C++ is trying to hide complexities, and we're arguing that doing so is instead adding more complexities.

Sure, Python makes it easy to listen on a socket, parse HTTP, and send HTML down -- hiding a lot of complexity. But it's made it impossible to do so very efficiently and scale up. Try and dive into Python's stack for that (Re: 'hold in your brain all the "modern" features'), and you'll get lost in a myriad of CPython (or whatever flavor you choose) generics and indirection that you can't optimize. Startup times matter, because you are all about hiding complexities and went "serverless" and constantly eat cold starts (Re: '"modern" compile times').

I think it's apt to compare "modern" C++ as moving towards something like Python. Not great for a lot of applications of C++ (Re: games, in the article and my focus) or its perceived goals as a better C. That's the point. Many of the C++ additions are being slagged for making a worse C. It's looking nothing like C any longer. It's a giant ball of complexity with dozens of ways of doing the same thing and hoping you learned them all.

This is why I think languages like Rust (or even Go) get a lot of attention. They have a good interop story with C, like C++ has. And if we're going to learn a bunch of non-C looking language grammar, C++ is doing a worse job.