How to choose between C and C++?. The answer is pretty clear. C allows powerful data type abstractions using three star and two star pointers, C++ only allows one star pointers. Also void pointers on C are more powerful once you try to pass abstract parameters to functions and procedures. The abstractions on C++ are built on top of virtual classes and templates, not its data types as C does. So, if you need to create complex data types, for example to handle hardware buffers, you should use C rather than C++, but if you want to create abstractions to manage real life objects, an object oriented interface like C++ does have is pretty good, enough to support almost any object oriented abstraction that you want to implement.
Another interesting fact is how you can integrate both C and C++ libraries and programs without too much effort. For example for the lower level of abstractions in our ProView systems, we are using C interfaces to reach the hardware layer, but that layer has an abstraction layer that allow us to see each device as a C++ class, so we can get device status, device errors, device data among other interesting operations as one single object instance, rather than using device descriptors or data structure pointers. So, we can operate each device instance, even if that device is a composite device that drives multiple sub-devices, as one single object instance with its own data and methods. That makes our life much easier than handling devices as data structures and plain C routines.
For example we have named a composite device PCU or Pump Control Unit, which consist on a pump control, an actuator control, a valve control and two manometers. It is very nice to see that PCU as one device, using plain methods over the PCU rather than using multiple plain C calls over their C data structures and pointers using each sub-device to control the unit. Even if they are using different protocols, we can operate each device transparently, thanks to every abstraction layer that we have placed on the system.
Choosing between C and C++ is not a religious choice. Mainly because I am a language agnostic programmer, and I work with limited set of programming languages where I can find better programmers, like C, C++, Python, Haskell and Lisp. Also I can choose Haskell if I want, because it supports low level function calling thanks to the Foreign Function Interface, where I can create low level interfaces for hardware devices and operate them in higher level using Haskell. For your surprise, I can create complex control algorithms in Haskell, migrate those algorithms to Agda, and create the proper proofs on those controlling algorithms. The result is a formally verified control algorithm. I can do the same with Coq and Haskell program extraction. A simple example for FFI code, is the GeoIP library interface that I have made on my ApacheLogRev project, and you can see the source code here.
So, is much better to be a language agnostic programmer than be linked to programming languages as religions…
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