I'm a developer since 30 years. I program C#, Rust, Java, some TS etc. I can probably go to most repositories on github and at least clone and build them. I have failed - repeatedly - to build even small C++ libraries despite reasonable effort. And that's not even _writing any C++_. Just installing the tooling around CMake etc is completely Kafkaesque.

The funniest thing happened when I needed to compile a C file as part of a little Rust project, and it turned out one of the _easiest_ ways I've experienced of compiling a tiny bit of C (on Windows) was to put it inside my Rust crate and have cargo do it via a C compiler crate.

Most of the C++ world has standardized on CMake.

I work on large C++ projects with 1-2 dozen third party C and C++ library dependencies, and they're all built from source (git submodules) as part of one CMake build.

It's not easy but it is fairly simple.