I'm not sure there's THAT much room for legitimate criticism in C++, if you know the basic inviolate root principles of the language. Or to put it another way, anything that fixes those particular problems would not be C++ anymore. I think D attempted to fill that niche, and it has failed to gain traction, no matter how good it seems. My implication in posting that quote was "if D was popular, people would be complaining about it too", because all languages have a determined set of detractors (anti-Java "not everything fits into OO", anti-Python "whitespace isn't a substitute for program structure", anti-Lisp "how many brackets do you need")....

Popularity and quality aren't linked (I compared C++ to PHP in another comment), and I don't mean to imply that D is rubbish. I've given it a cursory glance several times over the years. It just doesn't seem to have a compelling argument for my use - I'm already in C++, and if I have enough leeway to go higher-level I tend to end up in Python, with the massive library of useful stuff behind it.

That's pretty much exactly what I was thinking of yes. But then using it as a hammer 90% of the time.

I assume what GP means is std::unique_ptr, std::shared_ptr, std::make_shared, and then your own custom make_unique because they forgot that in the standard and a bunch of std::moves to convert the canonical unique_ptr from your factory functions into the shared_ptrs that you are actually using everywhere else.

And then fighting with the several iterations of only half-done C++11 implementations in recent versions MSVC compared to the better support in Clang while trying to keep your code compiling across 4 different platforms with as little use of #ifdefs as possible. May the noodley-appendaged one help you if you were hoping for easy multi-threading or unicode support.

I keep telling myself I like this language, but who am I kidding ;-). Seriously though, the language has made strides with C++11 and C++14, but it will always remain a minefield of ways to stab, shoot, detonate, incinerate and irradiate yourself in the foot, with some implicit casting to hands and other appendages thrown in.

It was Bjarne himself who said that there are two kinds of programming languages: those everyone complains about, and those that nobody uses.
On-topic, lots of people are going to hate C++, for its multi-paradigm "everything and the kitchen sink" approach combined with near-C-compatibility and low-levelness. It's the kind of language where two programmers come up with five different ways to do the same thing, and four of them are probably wrong in non-obvious ways. It's fun though, in the way that a high-performance sports car is fun to drive, but easy to wipe out.
I've been using it professionally for 15 years now, and if I observe anything, it's that the longer I use it, the more my stuff looks like C. I keep shaking my head at younger colleagues mis-using templates all over the place ("re-usability!", and hour-long compile times, coupled with really non-obvious implicit conversions and instantiations, never mind the error messages), and object-oriented hierarchies where each object is such a tiny part of the system that you need to remember 10 classes at the same time just to have a slight inkling of what this thing is actually supposed to do.
I still have that nearly irresistible urge to defend the language whenever discussions like these come up, but so much of that is because it's the language I use all bloody day. And then I write something incredibly useful in 10 lines of Python.....

C++ has its place, a masochistic place, ostensibly programming a higher-level abstraction than the people writing plain C ("troglodytes!", but most of them actually seem to know what they are doing and rustle up the higher-level abstractions directly in C, I have respect for you guys), and the people who don't have that much need for low-level features, the last drops of performance or cross-platform compilation (you're probably working in Java, C#, Python, Ruby, and *enjoying it* most of the time. And yes, you Java guys have every right to tear into me about cross-platformness, it's not like it's just hand-waving in C++ either). It's sort of a similar niche to PHP I guess. You know full well that a lot of the reasons for the hate are true, but all you have is this swiss-army-knife of a hammer and everything must be a nail.

My interpretation on the first reading of that quote was "dear retail investor, you should be happy you're getting what we've decided to allow you, and now shut up", or in Darth Vader terms "We are altering the deal, pray we don't alter it any further".

No, but what happens is that the architect comes along and tells you that the foreman picked the wrong side of the plot markers when telling you where to dig the ditch, so it's exactly a ditch-breadth off from where it should be. Please fill it up again and dig a new one to the side before the concrete for the foundation is poured, and by the way, the cement truck is arriving in 30 minutes.

Look at the name - Quality Assurance. QA can only tell you it's bad, it doesn't make anything better. And what they can look at is usually only the external, visible part, which may seem to be working nicely but built from spit and wire on the inside, ready to fall apart at the next version update of the printer driver. That doesn't mean QA is useless, it's just a final double-check to see that you've built the right thing.
No, writing good quality software is a team effort of everyone involved. As a developer in the middle, you should be able to smile at the great design documents given to you by the system analysts, telling you what's needed and how, while having enough freedom to do it in the best way given the tools and frameworks you work with. And you should be able to high-five the QA people when they fail to find anything wrong when you deliver it, because you know that if they give their OK you can sleep on both ears and the users will be able to do what they need to do. And that's a good month's work if you managed to get there on the third try :P.

Bonus points for realizing that your own code from three months ago is also "other peoples' code".

About 30-35 years ago I remember how people would be playing around in Basic on the weekend for entertainment. It really isn't that far-fetched, and messing around with the tape deck and volume control just to let things load made people realize that programming is a lot like Building in the Real World, where having a PZ screwdriver instead of the PH you really need sort-of-works but makes your life a hell of a lot harder.
I don't know what it's really like today, I've been doing it professionally for too long, but I still see quite a few newbie questions around Stackoverflow, Gamedev.net, people reading about the Raspberry Pi on the train, etc. etc. I think it's still going on.

Maybe I'm biased, because I've done some pretty crazy remodeling on a house, but building software is a LOT like building houses, lots of people just have really strange misconceptions about how well houses are(n't) built. Those same people are often in management, have to get an expensive second contractor in after the first one totally cocked up the extension to their 5-bedroom house because the I-beams he brought were a couple of inches shorter than spec but oh well, there is NO WAY that correlates to writing software (even though that's supposed to be their management expertise).

Programmers aren't special little snowflakes. People generally just do stupid things.

You most certainly can, for hot water purposes. It doesn't outright replace other power sources, but it does drive down energy usage significantly during times when there is enough sunlight.

That's Bleed by Meshuggah.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nfah Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

No, I'm simply applying logic - the statement you were refuting was "99.8% of climate scientists accept AGW". The paper you quoted has the following statement:
"Climate science experts who publish mostly on climate change, and climate scientists who publish mostly on other topics, were the two groups most likely to be convinced that humans have contributed to global warming, with 93% of each group indicating their concurrence.".

There clearly is dissent about AGW (in the details if not in the large), even within the science community, and the topic of "what to do about it" is even more thorny, but it remains that studies including the one you quoted repeatedly show that around 9 out of 10 people specialized in climate do think AGW is real.

That study covers meteorologists, not climate scientists. Weather and climate are not the same thing, and only 13% of the survey respondents identified climate as their area of expertise.

My third language is actually french - my original post was repeating a joke, falsely attributed to G.W. Bush.