Coming from Java world, I can tell that it is nice being able to raise exceptions from the constructor.
However, switching from C++ to C is absurd. C++ is (mostly) a super set of C. Whatever you want to do in C, in C++ is also possible.
If there are some C++ features (exceptions, classes, contructors, etc.) that are making his coding task more complicated, he should simply stop using those features and refactor his code.
Coming from Java world, I can tell that it is nice being able to raise exceptions from the constructor.
However, switching from C++ to C is absurd. C++ is (mostly) a super set of C. Whatever you want to do in C, in C++ is also possible.
If there are some C++ features (exceptions, classes, contructors, etc.) that are making his coding task more complicated, he should simply stop using those features and refactor his code.