C++ is weird and full of pitfalls

This is a rant. It's fairly widely known that this language is full of pitfalls that waste one's time, and humans are better off using other languages. But I keep getting stuck on projects where this isn't well known. So I will vent by ranting.

Say we have this simple C++ program:

#include <stdio.h>

class B
{
public:
    virtual void f(void)
    {
        printf("Base: B::f\n");
    }
};

class C : public B
{
public:
    virtual void f(void)
    {
        printf("Child: C::f\n");
    }
};

int main(void)
{
    C c;
    B* pb = &c;
    pb->f();
    return 0;
}

This defines a derived class and calls a virtual function through a base pointer. As expected, the virtual call finds the right function, and we print Child: C::f. Now suppose we override the virtual function in a slightly different way:

virtual void f(int x = 5)
{
    printf("Child: C::f\n");
}

Here the child f() takes a default argument. Since this is a default argument, one could expect that it looks similar enough to the base f(void) to be overridden. Except it isn't: we print Base: B::f. The same thing happens if the base has the default argument. Or if the function is defined as const.

This is a particularly pernicious failure, since your child f() is just silently not called, which results in longer-than-they-should-be debugging sessions. I get why this limitation exists, but I completely reject that this state of affairs is even remotely acceptable. Name overloading should either be banned by the language outright, or it should generate errors at even the slightest hint of ambiguity. The failure described above is obviously ambiguous and error prone, and this is clealy knowable at compile time.

C++ is full of such features that on the surface make writing code easier, but that result in code that's impossible to read, and really easy to break.

Let's use better languages, OK?