Good and informative summary, thanks. Your statement about C++ is pretty cheap though, you have to consider the domain(s) of the language. It is complex because it's concepts more closely build on how the hardware actually works and provides tools for those who need access to those deep internals. Considering that most valuable software is still build with C++ also proves it has reason of existence. I believe that knowing how hardware works actually makes you a better software developer. Comparing it to PHP is just wrong..