The more I hear and read about C++ (e.g. this: http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/), I get the impression, that I'd waste my time learning C++. I some wrote network routing algorithm in C++ for a simulator, and it was a pain (as expected, especially coming from a perl/python/Java background ...).
I'm never happy about giving up on some technology, but I would be happy, if I could limit my knowledge of C-family languages to just C, C# and Objective-C (even OS Xs Cocoa, which is huge and takes a lot of time to learn looks like joy compared to C++ ...).
Do I need to consider myself dumb or unwilling, just because I'm not partial to the pain involved learning this stuff? Technologies advance and there will be options other than C++, when deciding on implementation languages, or not?
And for speed: If speed were that critical, I'd go for a plain C implementation instead, or write C extensions for much more productive languages like ruby or python ...
The one-line version of the above: Will C++ stay such a relevant language that every committed programmer should be familiar with it?
[ edit / thank you very much for your interesting and useful answers so far .. ]
[ edit / .. i am accepting the top-rated answer; thanks again for all answers! ]
