I was making a narrow comment that you can turn on VLAs, off exceptions, etc., with C++ flags on publicly available compilers regardless of what the C++ language specification and the C++ experts say.

The difference in build times between identical code compiled with the C language or C++ language is probably negligible. Or at least dwarfed by using a better build system, a faster build machine, and/or some sort of build caching technology.

> Beyond that, there is no compiler flag to stop requiring explicit casts of void pointers before assigning them.

I believe that's true. And there are probably a few other ergonomic differences beyond this one. Has anyone proposed that as a feature flag for Clang and/or GCC? Open source C and C++ compiler devs don't have a lot of free time such that they peruse social media looking for things to do.

No comment on your anecdote other than to say I have heard versions of that story before but with other programs and in basically every other language. Including C.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I think a lot of your points are valid points. About taste. Which is fair and fine, but it's also true that the difference between C and C-style C++ are pretty minor, especially if someone knows how to enforce coding standards with clang-query wired up to CI or something like that.