Rust is quite complicated but people like it a lot. Python too in a way - it's quite large and complicated but it exposes the complexity in a very gradual way and you can ignore so much of the language and still get things done.

I agree with you about simple languages though. I really like Go - the "there should be only one way to do things" from the Zen of Python actually applies to Go in a way that it doesn't apply to Python at all.

On the one hand, almost everyone (including C++ fans) agrees that the language is too big. On the other hand, comtracts just formalize an existing and useful concept.

Lots of programmers match the right language to the right job, I think the zen of C++ is embracing the ugly as a feature; there are so many subsets of that language you never have to leave it.

I view C++ (and increasingly C# and Java) as a test bed for language features. You throw every possible feature into it and people can then see what makes sense and what doesn't. That allows others to pick features and use them for more opinionated and simpler languages.