If you're a C purist (or just a purist in general) then of course you're right, but I personally think that C-with-classes is clearer, easier for a layman to understand (many people who call themselves C programmers still get nervous when function pointers come out to play), and is usually worth the trade-offs. You can write a lot of very decent code this way and have a little bit of "the best of both worlds", and avoid getting into a lot of the admittedly very dark corners and nasty surprises that C++ has to offer...