The problem with C++ is that all of your friends can see your private parts.

That's not a problem, it's a feature!

But at least it has class.

Ahhhhhh! I get the reference ...

No no no no no no no, stop it! friends are essentially a bad idea in programming!
Edit:
I'm not saying that whole idea is 100% bad but missuses are too much common. Breaking encapsulation is not always well motivated (most often by lazyness).
In my opinion if you use friends you are bad designer.

@MaLiN2223 I think I've used friends once only, in 26 years. It was something to do with overloaded operators, IIRC. It's just a weird feature.

C#'s extension methods is a parallel case. It was introduced to make LINQ possible, but some people misuse it like crack, and create obfuscation for no good reason.

@Grumpy exactly.
Extensions methos are also good for extending string class however they forbid to use private parts of classes (if i remember correctly) hence no encapsulations are broken unlike when using friends.

@MaLiN2223 friends are there to *avoid* breaking encapsulatiin by adding more public api

@elazar it is called 'work around' and if you see that you need something you should change the project. Code smells more and more with behavior you described.

Privacy is just an illusion !

#define private public

@MaLiN2223 Sometimes, but not necessarily. It is fine-grained permissions, like "protected". It should be questioned wherever it appears, but there are good answers.