Not at all. You can use CRTP, you can use structs, you can use SFINAE, etc. UPDATE: And for the record, inherence of pure interface classes works just fine in

Not at all. You can use CRTP, you can use structs, you can use SFINAE, etc. UPDATE: And for the record, inherence of pure interface classes works just fine in C++. The stuff where it gets ugly is when you try building a deep inheritance hierarchy of behaviour. It can work, but usually not terribly well.