1) There are a lot of nooks and crannies that can bite you in the butt
2) It's cosmetically similar to C and Java so you get a false sense of security (The article points this out).
3) It's popular (same effect for PHP or Java (I took a intro to programming in this language, so I know it!))
4) Due to #1, every decent C++ shop tends to standardize on a subset of the language, with practices that deal with the nooks and crannies of just that subset.
Comments
I agree with the general observation, but it's definitely not the case that C++ is the only language where this happens.
True, but C++ is a perfect storm for this.
1) There are a lot of nooks and crannies that can bite you in the butt
2) It's cosmetically similar to C and Java so you get a false sense of security (The article points this out).
3) It's popular (same effect for PHP or Java (I took a intro to programming in this language, so I know it!))
4) Due to #1, every decent C++ shop tends to standardize on a subset of the language, with practices that deal with the nooks and crannies of just that subset.