C++ has evolved tremendously since. There are better arguments.

(and I say this as a C developer who doesn't believe C++ is the right answer)

(not that I'm arguing for C++ in linux or such)

Recently created a third party SDK DLL in c++ and could not pass c++ types natively (unless you coupled to compiler and maybe version of compiler).

The important part is that it is used by most, if not all, C++ compilers on that platform.

UWP now even supports generics and actual inheritance.

* C++ has advanced considerably, and features like constexpr, lambas, unique_ptr, etc make writing code easier without runtime overhead.

* The C Compiler that Linux uses, is now written in C++

* Clang tidy checks make it relatively easy to keep problematic C++ features out.

The fact that C++ is largely a superset of C means that just like GCC did, there can be a gradual migration of code.

...and gained considerable complexity in the process. (I'm aware that C has gained some too, but not to the extent of C++.)

This is not the case for evolving C++.

And yes, the fact that abi stability isn't really a thing in c++ land is a huge problem too. It has been tried before with beos and it sucked.