[pjmlp]

Yes, C++ was a pain to write portability before 2000, but so was C, in spite of having been standardized in 1990, most compilers were a mix of K&R C and ANSI C.

Nevertheless, all major desktop OSes were going C++ for their application frameworks, before the widespread adoption of GNU software.

> A number of the things you mention above were spectacularly unsuccessful.

Mostly due to politics between corporations and very little to do with C++ itself.