>plumbing code to take care of error handling This becomes much simpler once you learn how to write your own variadic functions (it's not that hard, though I d

>plumbing code to take care of error handling This becomes much simpler once you learn how to write your own variadic functions (it's not that hard, though I do admit it could be prettier). Then you just write one single logerrf function or whatever, which 9 times out of 10 you can carry with minor modifications to your next project. Java does try/catch better in the sense that with checked exceptions you can force library users to at least acknowledge exceptions. Without checked exceptions, try/catch just hides the extra int *err argument under the rug, actually increasing the risk of library users not acknowledging edge cases. >and resource management I don't like C++ malloc'ing things behind my back. I see it as trading maintainability for instant gratification. The problem is compounded by the way C++ doesn't play nice with gdb/valgrind. Memory leaks and other memory errors are much easier to fix in C than C++. >C is so tedious It really isn't, though, if you use it right. Whatever syntactic tedium it has is more than compensated for by the lightning-fast compile time and the infinitely simpler compiler errors (due to no overloading, no templates...)