I agree, though a big issue is that at some points progress can't happen without breaking backwards-compatibility. If the problem to be solved is that something is allowed which shouldn't be, then backwards-compatibility will prevent progress.
C & C++ allow quite a few things they shouldn't need to allow to accomplish their goals. They'll never stop allowing those things, so they'll never improve in certain ways.
Rust has a strong backwards-compatibility guarantee, and it has run into this issue with its standard library already. The edition system means the language can break compatibility in some cases, but the standard library can't. I suspect this will eventually prevent necessary incremental change, as it has for C & C++.
C & C++ allow quite a few things they shouldn't need to allow to accomplish their goals. They'll never stop allowing those things, so they'll never improve in certain ways.
Rust has a strong backwards-compatibility guarantee, and it has run into this issue with its standard library already. The edition system means the language can break compatibility in some cases, but the standard library can't. I suspect this will eventually prevent necessary incremental change, as it has for C & C++.