What amazes me about C++ is that the complexity is deliberate. I started learning it voraciously in the early 90s, read Design and Evolution of C++ and many other books. Over and over again the theme was to be broad and deep, multi-paradigm, kitchen-sink approach that should have as much power as possible, with the bizarre caveat that it had to be backwards compatible with C (mostly).

I have never understood this POV, but to understand C++ O think you need to grok this key point deeply.