[pansa2]

That’s your choice of C++ subset, but the problem with these huge languages is that everyone chooses a different subset to use.

Sticking to plain C has the advantage of probably being the subset of C++ (I know, it’s not technically a subset) that’s in widest use.

[krychu]

I’d add that deciding on the subset is a high cost operation. Design of such a smaller subset-language will likely not be on par with language that is small by design.

[gus_massa]

> everyone chooses a different subset to use

I prefer using C++ like "C but with cin and cout" and I informally call it C+ :)

[taneq]

> (I know, it’s not technically a subset)

Is it not? I thought C++ was explicitly a strict superset of C?

[janoc]

It is not and never was.

Look at for ex. what const means in each, or auto. Or variable length arrays (feature that doesn't exit in C++). Or designated initializers that C++ didn't have for a long time.

Here is a good list of differences: https://mcla.ug/blog/cpp-is-not-a-superset-of-c.html

[gmueckl]

C++ is almost a perfect superset of old C before C99. There are odd corner cases where prograns are parsed differently, but these are quite contrived. The 3rd edition of The C++ Programming language lists a few cases. Since then, C has had may additions to the language that made it diverge from C++. Your linked article is almost entirely about these new C additions.

[janoc]

Even for the old C it wasn't a superset.

There are plenty of legal C programs that aren't legal C++ - if for nothing else, then because C++ has more reserved keywords which are perfectly legal identifier names in C.

E.g. this is legal C but not legal C++:

int template = 10;

[einpoklum]

Syntactically, it almost was; and even this is no longer true today with C11 and later,

More importantly, though - the syntax is not what matters. The languages are very very different in idiomatic use. You just don't write programs the same way with C and with C++. And the gulf between the two only expands with time. A decent C program is almost certainly a poor C++ program, in terms of idioms, utilization of library facilities, and sometimes even in terms of performance (!).