I'm finding my relationship with C++ improves if I think of it like a collection of wild, ecosystem-evolved beasts... And I'm Steve Irwin.

"Crikey! Would you look at *this* li'l bugger! It's a distance calculator on N-dimensional coordinates! Now most people'll never even see this in their lives, but it's part of the standard templates, so it's runnin' around in the background, doin' the heavy work for you. Oh, here! Would ya look at these templates! Fully recursive! So what we're gonna do is, we're gonna write a concrete implementation at N=2, shortcut the recursion right out from under 'er! This is wicked dangerous, but we've had some practice, so let's get crackin'."