I've been writing C++ since the late 80s. I love the language, but this claim is wildly wrong.

C++ is hard - hard to write, hard to review, hard to debug.

For example, here's the compilation command from someone else's C++ project I'm working with this month:

$ gcc -Wno-unused-result -Wsign-compare -Wunreachable-code -fno-common -dynamic -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -arch x86_64 -g -IJUCE/modules/ -IJUCE/modules/juce_audio_processors/format_types/VST3_SDK/ -I/private/var/folders/wx/mfwvwblj52q05zn2tlzxs1cc0000gn/T/pip-build-env-q_exmz_v/overlay/lib/python3.6/site-packages/pybind11/include -I/Users/tom/.virtualenvs/vl8/include -I/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/include/python3.6m -c /private/var/folders/wx/mfwvwblj52q05zn2tlzxs1cc0000gn/T/pip-req-build-uox4pw1a/pedalboard/python_bindings.cpp -o build/temp.macosx-10.9-x86_64–3.6/private/var/folders/wx/mfwvwblj52q05zn2tlzxs1cc0000gn/T/pip-req-build-uox4pw1a/pedalboard/python_bindings.o -fvisibility=hidden -g0 -stdlib=libc++ -std=c++17 -mmacosx-version-min=10.14 -DJUCE_DISPLAY_SPLASH_SCREEN=1 -DJUCE_USE_DARK_SPLASH_SCREEN=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_audio_basics=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_audio_formats=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_audio_processors=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_core=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_data_structures=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_dsp=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_events=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_graphics=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_gui_basics=1 -DJUCE_MODULE_AVAILABLE_juce_gui_extra=1 -DJUCE_GLOBAL_MODULE_SETTINGS_INCLUDED=1 -DJUCE_STRICT_REFCOUNTEDPOINTER=1 -DJUCE_STANDALONE_APPLICATION=1 -DJUCER_LINUX_MAKE_6D53C8B4=1 -DJUCE_APP_VERSION=1.0.0 -DJUCE_APP_VERSION_HEX=0x10000 -Wall -DMACOS=1 -O3 -xobjective-c++ -DJucePlugin_Build_VST=0 -DJucePlugin_Build_VST3=0 -DJucePlugin_Build_AU=0 -DJucePlugin_Build_AUv3=0 -DJucePlugin_Build_RTAS=0 -DJucePlugin_Build_AAX=0 -DJucePlugin_Build_Standalone=0 -DJucePlugin_Build_Unity=0 -DJUCE_PLUGINHOST_VST3=1 -DJUCE_DISABLE_JUCE_VERSION_PRINTING=1 -DJUCE_WEB_BROWSER=0 -DJUCE_USE_CURL=0 -DJUCE_PLUGINHOST_AU=1

And yes, I can explain every part of this — if you were really bored and needed some boring entertainment.

Error messages can be even worse! There was a competition to get the longest error messages from 256 bytes of C++ code, and the winning error was over 1.5 gigabytes of text.

Now, I'm used to all this and I can read it sufficiently easy that I forget - until someone comes to me just baffled.

Even though I've spent most of my life writing C++, if I start a new project, the default language will be Python, because I'm 3 to 10 times as productive in Python than C++.