Why do you think Microsoft decided to drop C support beyond C89 and only caved in due to the pressure of FOSS projects?
A kernel without drivers, only produces heat.
> "grasping at straws" would seem to sum up your position
Fits exactly the position of someone that desperately wants to assert ntoskernel.exe is written just like when NT 3.51 got released into the world.
"Kernel proper - This is mostly written in C. Things like the memory manager, object manager, etc. are mostly written in C. The boot loaders are written in ASM, but set up a C environment rather quickly.
Drivers - that said, a lot of newer kernel mode drivers are actually written in C++ (however, its style is more akin to "C with classes". Lower level code has been much slower to adopting anything past C++98)
User land - Mostly C++ with varying levels of quality and version compliance. If it's a pre-Windows 8.0 component, it was written against mostly C++98. More recent features are C++14 and better."
this doesn't mean the ntoskrnl.exe is written in C++
the fact nvidia's linux loadable kernel blob is written in C++ doesn't suddenly mean linux is written in C++
"grasping at straws" would seem to sum up your position