C++ FQA is rarely a good place to start for anything else than finding examples of biased writing.
I found that combining the C++ FAQ and the C++ FQA made me a much better C++ programmer when I was learning the language.
Sure, it's ranty and biased, but that's kind of the point.
It's impressive to see how many of the complaints have been addressed by C++11, actually, and how many others have been addressed by compatible changes to the compilers and standard libraries (in particular, template related error messages can still be pretty bad, but they have improved tremendously with gcc and clang in the last few years).