Every couple of years the part of my brain responsible for making good decisions shuts off and I start looking at what all is required to parse C++, and in particular how you parse it in, say, yacc. As far as I can tell it is done by magic.
With the operator suffix extensions, though, I think C++ has broken new ground again. It is now the only allegedly serious language that requires a symbol table to lex.
Though my bet is still on spam and anti-spam, they have better incentives.