As a longtime hater of C++, I do want to point out that this is one of my big issues with it. Every time I mention my various gripes with C++, I get the same response from the apologists: "Well, if you just do C++ the right way, that's not an issue"

Fine! Great! Then just tell me what the right way is! But no one can (or if they do, then someone else comes along and immediately tells them they're wrong). If there were some agreed-on idiomatic subset of C++ that avoided all the pitfalls, or even just a book that everyone agreed was "good", that would go a long way toward warming me on the language. But so far as I can tell, no such thing exists.