boost::lambda still blows. I avoid using C++'s <functional> and friends because of the crap-tastic missing support for lambda expressions. Luckily there are a couple of sane proposals to fix this in the next version of C++ (aka "C++0x"). http://www.research.att.com/~bs/N1968-lambda-expressions.pdf
I'm happy to say that I no longer hack C++. I loved C++ until I realized that you have little hope of using C++'s features correctly unless you sink 5 years into becoming a C++ expert. Digital Mars D looks pretty damn good, but I haven't looked into it very deeply.
Yeah, I think that is precisely the problem with C++. The language lets you do some amazing things, but it is just way too complicated. Unless you've spent a long time becoming an expert at the language, it is all too easy to write C++ code that looks correct, but it is actually wrong (either poorly performant, or non-portable, or subtly buggy).
Whereas C doesn't give you all the wizzbang C++ features, but it has the important property that wrong code looks wrong; the language is simple, and there's often "one logical way" to implement a given algorithm. That translates into simpler code (albeit often less expressive), and fewer bugs.
I'd still use C++ over C... virtual functions, inheritance, RAII, and standard containers are too useful. The important thing is to not get caught up in C++ voodoo magic land, and spend 2 weeks trying to get a template with Alexandrescu typelists working correctly when nobody is going to even going to reuse the code, nor wants to learn your fancy interface, nor wants to maintain your fancy code.
I have programmed a little D, and although you will be stuck in the imperative/object-oriented mindframe as with C++, D is quite useable. The overall design is coherent, and anyone with a basic understanding of C++ should be able to pick it up very quickly. It even has some lambdaness.
