[nine_k]

Languages like С allow you to control more (low-level) aspects of a program than languages like Ruby. Ruby is only concise because it handles tons of things for you, the way it sees fit.

You can make C++ quite concise, or quite verbose, depending on the level of detail you can hide under layers of abstractions.

It's much like the framework vs set of libraries: a framework allows you to write very little and produce a lot when all you're doing is wiring together existing pieces and write business logic code it the slots provided for that. Similarly Ruby allows you to write much lass than C if all you're doing is wiring together hashtables of hastables of hashtables, and rely on garbage collection.