Also you can write a full book just about C pointers, it's up to the author how far they can stretch it.
N.B. I also am not a huge fan of C++ but certainly for the past 10 years I think it's a net loss not using it.
If you look at how much surgery is required to make the Rust for Linux alloc work you can see he was quite serious. For example Rust for Linux Vec::push doesn't exist, because if the Vec wasn't big enough that's an implicit allocation, instead Vec::try_push is provided, which is fallible.
There was nobody proposing to even attempt that kind of work for C++.
I don't think his position is entirely rational (and, understand, I have otherwise huge respect for him as an engineer).
Please reconsider bashing it that much, if not out of respect for the people who use this tool daily, then out of the observation that the program you used to write this message was probably written in or uses libraries written in C++.
It's a powerful tool and has been used to create amazing things in competent hands, so maybe its flaws, that we like to bash so much, are a great thing - it's what drove people to create all this other languages that we love to experiment with.
I don't see much difference between pointing out that C++ is a bad idea despite the fact that some good software was written using C++ and pointing out that slavery is a bad idea despite the fact that some famous US landmarks were built using slave labour.
Also, "reconsider bashing it that much, if not out of respect for the people who use this tool daily", wow. Surely you don't mean that respecting people who are in a tough situation (e.g. having to write C++ daily) involves never pointing out that the situation they are in is, indeed, tough and could be better?
It's still semi-compatible with C, templates are about as close to macros as you'll get with a syntax; and the algorithms parts of stdlib are in many ways brilliant, thanks to Stepanov.
But the complexity is definitely overwhelming.
Have fun :)
Niche knowledge is fantastic for those who want it or need it. No need to knock it just because you don't.
Specifically compared to C, there's a reason so many people switched to C++. They weren't sheep. They weren't just following marketing. If you don't understand what was better about C++, then you're criticizing from a place of ignorance, which is not likely to provide valid criticism.
Now Rust, Go, Python... there are reasons at least some people switch from C++ to those languages.
Here's the old post for reference:
https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/1/20/20
Also, one for git:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/alpine.LFD.0.999.0709061839510.5...
There's a lot of extra fluff like examples and such beyond the basics of C++ initialization.
Also seems to have relatively little text per page in the Amazon preview [1].
[1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BW38DDBK?asin=B0BW38DDBK&revisio...