> C++ is a baroque language with way too many conflicting features, conflicting cultural standards, and general all-around cruft. Isn't it?
This is a really common sentiment, but when pressed to name a specific thing that should be removed (ignoring backwards compatibility), people really struggle.
The standard library has a lot of cruft and poor legacy decisions, but it's several decades old. Any code that's been around for several decades is going to have cruft. Any language that is as successful as C++ will have the same problem when it reaches the age of C++. It's inevitable. Anything looks elegant and free of cruft when its only a few years old and has low enough usage that the maintainers can make breaking changes without breaking billions of lines of code.
This is a really common sentiment, but when pressed to name a specific thing that should be removed (ignoring backwards compatibility), people really struggle.
The standard library has a lot of cruft and poor legacy decisions, but it's several decades old. Any code that's been around for several decades is going to have cruft. Any language that is as successful as C++ will have the same problem when it reaches the age of C++. It's inevitable. Anything looks elegant and free of cruft when its only a few years old and has low enough usage that the maintainers can make breaking changes without breaking billions of lines of code.