[eropple]

Memory for objects is allocated structurally as part of the object, not dynamically, wherever possible. And it's usually very possible. If you can't do that, provide an initialization method. (In almost all cases, I would personally prefer hiding that two-phase initialization within a factory function.)

As for "why not stick with C"--all of the other reasons still hold true, from templates on down. The simple existence of dtors with viable scope guards that are guaranteed to fire when exiting scope is reason enough for me to never write C and to look with a default skepticism on any codebase that thinks its developers are perfect enough not to need them.