Technically doesn’t です・だ serve a similar purpose to “it is” in this case. I’m not a native speaker but does it sound a bit strange if someone were to just say 雨? You would usually say 雨だ right? While it’s not the same as “it”, in this usage, だ・です is closer to the meaning of “is” so it’s kinda similar?

That said, the absence of a concept of “it” in Japanese has never occurred to me so that was an interesting revelation. I am also a native Mandarin speaker which doesn’t really have an “it” either so maybe that’s why.

Imo people should start with C first since it is a lot simpler than C++ while still providing a lot of what you mentioned. C++ adds a lot of things like name mangling, templates, L & R value references that can quickly make things a bit more daunting for beginners.

I also generally find error messages for C a lot more parsable for beginners than C++ ones.

I’m so grateful for Kotlin, it gets rid of so much of the annoyances in Java.

It’s only better imo if you set it to native resolution for the AA. If you set it to anything below that, there’s definitely still artifacting. It’s not crazy obvious but no way it’s not noticeable, especially if you have a larger screen.