The Trident and The Green Ox

I've been writing code for a few decades now. Started with C. The kind of C where you know roughly what the CPU is doing at any given moment — moving a register, touching a block of memory, shaving off a few microseconds. There's something satisfying about that directness. Assembly-level intuition. It sticks with you. It also makes you a little hostile toward anything that calls itself a "modern language." Not because you can't learn it. Because it doesn't feel right. From C to modern C++ For a long time, my C++ was really just C with classes. I found out later that most people who have "C++ engineer" on their resume are doing the same thing. That's where most of us plateau. Then I started using std::vector. Then RAII. Then I ran into compare_exchange_strong and compare_exchange_weak — spent a full day just figuring out when to use which. Then came C++17, SFINAE, template metaprogramming. Honestly, I questioned my life choices. But those tools also made my first serious project work th