[Someone]

A possible counterargument: it took gcc programmers 10 years to get to a point where gcc doesn't use ridiculous amounts of memory when compiling few lines of tricky code _in_C_.

Clang, written in C++, is faster, uses less memory, produces better error messages, and, I brink, took less calendar time and man hours to write.

Yes, it is a hard problem to solve, but from these two anecdotes, it seems solving it in C++ is easier than solving it in C.

And yes, I know the above probably is a fallacy; gcc hackers probably spent most of their time working on CPU ports and on getting gcc to produce better code. Begin hackers, and not having a C++ code base themselves, getting good C++ error messages just wasn't important enough for them.