I have used C and C++ extensively (10+ years both). I once tried to implement the C++ inheritance model in a C program (basically just fill up the virtual table manually). It was a complete nightmare, wrought with silly mistakes all over the place.

Probably Linus is right that C++ does not belong in the kernel but for application level code reinventing all the basic C++ things in C seems like a waste of time. Linked lists, virtual methods, some form of exception handling.. why waste your time? I laughed pretty hard when I understood how the linked list implementation in the Linux kernel works (pointer arithmetic tricks + sizeof). People don't even invent anything different from whats already in C++.

The key to using C++ is to find a comfortable subset and stick with it. I haven't used C++ on projects with more than 3 people yet so I don't know the pains of agreeing on exactly which subset to use but I imagine it could be done.