You can replace C++ with almost any other mainstream language in the above paragraph and it would still hold true. Problem is, contemporary general-purpose languages are used for such a wide range of different tasks that it is simply impossible for them not to be complex (syntactically or in terms of runtime envoronment). And yes you can hide complexity behind abstractions (which our programming languages successfully do), but you cannot really eliminate it. And despite all that I see more real-world applications written in "horrible" languages like C++ or Java than in "elegant" languages like Common Lisp.