I doubt the front-end stuff, e.g., templating, is written in C++. Rather, they use C++ because the library that powers their IM client, libpurple, is written i

I doubt the front-end stuff, e.g., templating, is written in C++. Rather, they use C++ because the library that powers their IM client, libpurple, is written in C. Writing a C/C++ bridge to whatever (Java, Ruby, Python, PHP) isn't hard and there are lots of generic solutions out there already, e.g., Thrift.