May be you learned all of these extremely recently before for decades I would definitely say C++ error messages were far worse than anything a fortran compiler has ever barked at me for. The bad days are definitely over but I still think C++ template errors can still be the thing of horrors even today. I know you compared matlab to fortran but you even said you took C++ just prior to this and I'm amazed that didn't harden you for anything gfortran/ifort would throw at you.