Comment by pskocik

In my codebase, I use expression macros (with a little bit of __typeof__-based type checks) to do it fully generically. Much of what you think you need C++ for can be done almost just as succinctly on top of plain C (I'm talking automated scope cleanups, semi-automated error handling, many generic things) and the compile times fly. I agree C++ has had some good ideas. In fact, I originally wanted to use it. But I came to the conclusion that it's too bloated, and more importantly, fundamentally broken in certain ways (RAII, exceptions, even templates and namespaces), and I ended up emulating what I think the good parts of C++ are on top of plain C. When C++ programmers think C, they usually think lack of generics and lots of explicit manual, micromanagement and pointer arithmetic, but it can be a lot more than that.