He is not saying that C++ is great. In fact he mentions several issues that bother him in his day to day use of the language. The problem with a lot of the anti-C++ rants is that they make it sound like it is impossible to get anything done in C++, which of course is not the case. Memory management for example is often brought up as a major issue with C++. I have been in 200+kloc projects that never leak memory and very, very rarely have to call delete. Just use RAII - it's not rocket science.