I actually like c++, but I can't deny the syntax is incredibly ugly. for example, here's a declaration of a vector of pairs of strings suitable for a header file:

  std::vector<std::pair<std::string, std::string>> vec;

anything involving nested namespaces and template parameters gets out of control really fast. the textual inclusion paradigm means I must declare the vector this way unless I want to inject everything from std:: into any source file that includes the header.

I'm not sure what GP means about debugging. in my experience it's just like any other language if you have symbols and minimal optimizations. it can be kinda weird with optimizations, but that's to be expected. if the compiler can optimize away entire blocks of code, I don't think a debugger can abstract over that.