I think a great deal of the pain in this example is self-inflicted. The hardware wrapping of an unsigned integer is fair game, but the multi-layer typedef and conversion to unsigned comparison are both warts of C++ that are totally avoidable. The multi-layer typedef is just the nature of enormous libraries with multitudinous compatibility concerns, so it's possible to forgive even that (and tools will help you there). But most reasonable languages won't let the assignment from unsigned int to int happen, and won't let the comparison happen either.