I taught C++ for several years. One of the things I stressed was that you don't write code for yourself, you write code for the guy who will add to it and maintain it. Many of my students were C programmers. The remainder were mostly first time programmers. By the end of each semester about half of the C programmers were still writing C code and struggling. The first time programmers were writing simpler more compact code than the C programmers. A multi-week project final always showed the difference between those that persisted with C and the C++ programmers. On average what a C++ programmer did in one page of code a C programmer did in over four pages.

peterg