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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

To balance with what you say:

Windows is mainly C for the kernel, and C++ for the rest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT#Programming_languag.... That's around 90% of the desktop/laptop market.

IIS, Microsoft's web server, is C++ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Information_Services. I think it is still the 3rd most popular web server in the worldwide.

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A significant portion of the C++ code in Windows uses very few C++ features or idioms and is basically C with classes or one or two useful features.

Which is still C++.

Absolutely, but that kind of code doesn’t really speak to complaints about modern C++ and all it’s become. I just wanted to chime in with that extra information. I don’t really have a dog in the fight, other than having a lot of love for C and good C code.

It is, but I do wonder if a large part of the problem with regard to using C++ features on Windows is the poor support for it in the ancient COFF linker and binary format they support. Lots of stuff like template export is possible with ELF which is impossible or dangerous on Windows.

I can also attest that lots of “modern C++” code exists in Windows.

There is code in Windows that was written yesterday and code in Windows that was written over three decades ago.

COM/UWP is the proper way to use C++ features on Windows in a inter-language way.

While not ideal exporting templates has been possible since Windows 3.1 days, as long as one sticks to a specific compiler.

That's impossible. According to half of the comments in every c++ thread on HN, any usage of C++ will immediately converge to using all features!!

/s obviously.

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