C++: Worlds of Pain

MS's efforts to implement the new C++0x standard in their compiler remind me of the world of pain that is C++ syntax.  James Iry jokes that the "language is so complex that programs must be sent to the future to be compiled by the Skynet artificial intelligence," but of course programmers do a kind of compilation in their head too, in order to understand and work with the language. 

My experience with C++ was typified by looking at Boost's graph library and wondering what the developers were smoking and whether or not I wanted to try some.  I took C++ reasonably far in my professional work; I used the STL containers extensively and even dipped into some of the generic algorithms (even with Visual Studio 6's awful C++ templates support, some of them were still useful).  However, there were too many ad hoc - seeming rules and conventions and ways to shoot myself in the foot, and name mangling was always an annoyance for me.