[qznc]

The goals of C++ are performance and abstraction and I do not know any language which beats it in both points.

I appreciate "small" languages, which can do a lot with a little core and abstraction mechanisms (Scheme,Smalltalk,...). However, for maximum performance, you need a good compiler, which understands and optimizes your abstractions. In the case of Lisp, whoever writes the macros is also responsible for optimizing them. Unfortunately, this requires application programmers to be also good in writing compilers.

C++ certainly has deficiencies, which cannot be fixed without completely breaking backwards compatibility. Rob Pike probably has them all included in the list you linked to. E.g. irregular syntax and header files.

In my opinion D has mostly fixed those conceptual issues. Unfortunately, D is not mature [0] and development is slow. While D is certainly not the final word in language design, I consider it the only serious competitor to C++.

[0] http://3d.benjamin-thaut.de/?p=20