[OT] C vs C++

[Dukc]

C++ is meant as an advancement of C. And it's used as one. Dmd 
was written in C++ until version 2.069, and countless other 
programs, both open and closed source still use it. It makes 
sense - it's a superset of C (well, almost), so one can always 
fall back to C features when the more complex features of C++ 
don't justify themselves.

Yet, many of the most well-known and successful programmers 
[don't see it like 
that](https://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/coders-at-work). Can 
it be that C++ is so complex that even conservative use of it 
makes your codebase so unreadable that even the archaic C is a 
better choice? Think how crazy this is - the cream of of our 
profession resort to pointer / length pairs over `std::vector`, 
and copy-pasting the module name to every public declaration over 
using namespaces.

There has to be HUGE downsides in C++ for this competent people 
to resort to this drastic avoidance. They do say what the 
downsides of C++ are about: too big a language to learn well, so 
code ends up using features the reader does not know. Still, if 
this is the case one would think it had been long since generally 
aknowledged: C++ guidebooks would tell to avoid less-known 
language features absent strong reasons, and later languages 
ought to have more pressure to be more minimalist like Go and 
less "CISC" like D or Rust. Yet, complex D features like ranges 
(okay, more of a Phobos feature), operator overloading, CTFE, 
objects and templates don't seem to be commonly hated.

This inconsistency in our attitude towards language complexity is 
interesting in my opinion. I want to hear your opinions, would 
you rather use C or C++ in your job if you had to pick one ("it 
depends"-answers okay). But most importantly, why? What do you 
make of that C++ complexity seems to be so appreciated and so at 
contempt at the same time?