Then there's C++. After ~30 years of it, I realized that I don't know how to initialize an object anymore. So I've given up.

I've been doing C++ since 93. What's changed that makes you feel this way?

Everything, man. Everything.

From the perspective of pulling some C++ programmer in 1993 into 2024, and dropping them into a large C++ code base consistently written with the latest C++ idioms.

(And yes, this is humorous exaggeration. But the name of C++ is apt. A C language dedicated to accumulating features.)

It's a pre-increment operator. If it was called ++C you'd have a point :)

I just don't understand how someone could have been working in C++ and not picked up the largest changes even just by osmosis. My code-based "upgraded" to C++11 about a year ago, but I can still read C++17 and am not intimidated by C++20 fragments. YMMV I suppose.

++C = Every time you go to write new code, some new features have already been adopted that you need to get hip with.

C++ = Every time you look at old code, it is already out of date based on new features that were adopted after the code was written.

If only they would stop changing the rug out from under ya, am I right? Just when you finish with one API, they go and release a new one.

Amazing answer