Probably true. I wasn't much of a fan either when I first used it in 1996. It was extremely verbose, slow to compile, and tended to generate compilation error messages that filled the screen.

But the experience of using the STL today with the niceties of C++11 and a good compiler like Clang is vastly better. I can now write code almost as concise as Ruby that runs 100x faster, without usually having to worry about memory management. I avoid using the streams stuff though. That chunk of the library could use a serious overhaul.

I'm rooting for Rust because it's designed to address the problem spaces I care about most but C++ has improved by leaps and bounds in the last few years.