I wrote this after repeatedly seeing experienced C programmers hit the same sharp edges while moving into modern C++ codebases.
Many of these differences are intentional and defensible from the C++ side. But some are still surprising because they invalidate patterns that were historically common, performant, or idiomatic in C.
The interesting part to me isn’t "C vs C++," but where the languages diverged philosophically: object lifetime vs raw storage, stronger type systems, implicit conversions, ABI and optimization assumptions, and the boundary between "portable" and "works on my compiler."
I’d also be curious which C constructs people still genuinely miss in modern C++. For me, restrict is still near the top of the list.
Many of these differences are intentional and defensible from the C++ side. But some are still surprising because they invalidate patterns that were historically common, performant, or idiomatic in C.
The interesting part to me isn’t "C vs C++," but where the languages diverged philosophically: object lifetime vs raw storage, stronger type systems, implicit conversions, ABI and optimization assumptions, and the boundary between "portable" and "works on my compiler."
I’d also be curious which C constructs people still genuinely miss in modern C++. For me, restrict is still near the top of the list.