Surprisingly you don't even need to use DO-178, you just need to convince the FAA that it is safe. I have never heard of anyone not using DO-178 though.
Have you seen level A software written using C++?
I have never heard of anyone not using DO-178 though.
Me neither. I can imagine that would be harder than just using DO-178, as the auditors are used to dealing with it.
Have you seen level A software written using C++?
Not personally. I have heard of a level A flight controls project that was planning to use C++, and was in the process of getting their C++ compiler (GCC C++, I believe) certified. I don't know how it turned out.
I don't know about level A... but SpaceX uses C++: http://www.reddit.com/comments/1853ap
(Working on some flight management software, I found a bug in our version of GCC. It's free software, right? So I could just fix it? Or even upgrade to a newer version? That would have meant re-certifying the compiler, so it was easier to work around the bug.)
In practice, I do see a lot avionics code written in Ada. I see a lot written in C. I see a lot written in C++. I haven't seen much else. I would guess a roughly even split between Ada and C or C++, with either C or C++ being increasingly favored for new clean sheet projects.