Is there any reason to use C instead of C++ for embedded development?

Question

Question

I have two compilers on my hardware C++ and C89

I\'m thinking about using C++ with classes but without polymorphism (to avoid vtables). The main r

Answer 1

How much ROM/FLASH do you have?

4kB of RAM can still mean there are hundreds of kilobytes of FLASH to store the actual code and static data. RAM on this size tends to be meant just for variables, and if you are careful with those you can fit quite a large program in terms of code lines into memory.

However, C++ tends to make putting code and data in FLASH more difficult, due to the run-time construction rules for objects. In C, a constant struct can easily be put into FLASH memory and accessed as a hardware-constant object. In C++, a constant object would require the compiler to evaluate the constructor at compile-time, which I think is still beyond what a C++ compiler can do (theoretically, you could do it, but it is very very hard to do in practice).

So in a "small RAM", "large FLASH" kind of environment I would go with C any day. Note that a good intermediate choice i C99 which has most of the nice C++ features for non-class-based-code.