I've come to despise how tightly integrated the C++ standard library is now with the c++ language itself, it is clearly evolving in a direction to make the two inseparable, but it is also making it less desireable. One cannot even compile a c++ executable with the /NODEFAULTLIB flag and not break core language features, e.g. static global object construction, dynamic_cast, ... For the purists that would like to separate the standard library from the language, and make tiny executables not depending on the runtime library, C is the only choice now it seems.