I was recently reminded of why I think it’s a bad idea to teach beginners C++. It’s a bad idea because it is an objective mess–albeit a beautiful, twisted, tragic, wondrous mess. Despite the current state of the community, this post is not a polemic against modern C++. This post is partly a follow-up on Simon Brand’s article, Initialization in C++ is bonkers, and partly a message to every student who’s wanted to begin their education by gazing into the abyss.