title: C++ Developer Tools: The Dark Areas
body: <p>While C++ Standards Committee works hard to define its intricate but powerful features and maintain its backward compatibility with C, in my personal experience I've found many aspects of programming with C++ cumbersome due to lack of tools. </p>
  
  <p>For example, I recently tried to refactor some C++ code, replacing many shared_ptr by T&amp; to remove pointer usages where not needed within a large library. I had to perform almost the whole refactoring manually as none of the refactoring tools out there would help me do this safely. </p>
  
  <p>Dealing with STL data structures using the debugger is like raking out the phone number of a stranger when she disagrees. </p>
  
  <p>In your experience, what essential developer tools are lacking in C++?</p>