C++ equivalent to spaghetti code

[Campy Happer]

Hello all,

I would like to bring to your attention a concept
and a term for it that I think is long overdue.

But first: In the bad old days of programming,
before subroutines were even available,
people used to write "spaghetti code", which
was an unreadable, unmaintainable mess of
"goto" statements.

With the increased availability of more
languages such as Pascal and C, and the
focus in programming courses on the importance
of modularity and abstract data types,
one might have thought that the days of
commonplace incomprehensible code were over,
or at least that the worst case scenario
in average code was improved.

In the case of C++, this is not so.
C++, with its multiple inheritance,
templates, and vastly bloated class libraries
such as STL and Boost, which permit and
seem even to require illegible coding practices
in which 5-deep derived classes are not
unlikely, has led to the C++ equivalent
of spaghetti code.

But how to describe it? Commonly people
simply call it "bad coding practices" but this
is too general. It's like calling a traffic accident
"bad driving practices". What then is the
term for an "accident" in C++? To describe this
build-up of tangled incomprehensible bloat,
I shall propose a new term:
    C++ plaque.

It is similar to the plaque build-up in
Alzheimer's insofar as it impairs memory,
makes the programmer confused about
what is located where and what day it is.
In addition, when C++ plaque accumulates,
it decreases the programmer's ability
to function in his/her daily work life, ergo
anything (s)he produces will be much more
likely to crash, e.g. KDE.

Fight code pollution by not polluting.

C++ plaque: The cure is within you.

Thank you for your attention.