If this is the best that can be said for it, then yes. 60 lines of "portable code" turns out not to be portable. Practically every line requires some piece of

If this is the best that can be said for it, then yes. 60 lines of "portable code" turns out not to be portable. Practically every line requires some piece of C++ ceremony. The nightmares around the potential for "undefined behavior" and miscompilations of code by C++ are ignored. It has always been the case that there are several subsets of C++ which make reasonable languages. The problem is that when you combine them in the wrong way, you get into a world of hurt. And in the real world, C++ programmers do not agree on which subset to use.