It's not that hard parsing template compiler errors (though I am looking forward to better errors in C++0x). Are you saying this is a good reason not to use templates at all? With a little practice they start to make sense. I'm sure for novice programmers the first time they see 500+ error messages stemming from a missed semi colon or curly brace (in regular code) it can be pretty bewildering too, but just like with template error messages you just ignore virtually all of it.