Yes I read those before. I didn't find them convincing. Intrusive lists is an anti pattern that you can also do in cpp if you want. Getting rid of exceptions doesn't mean you get rid of errors. It just means you can more easily ignore errors and continue running a corrupted program. But the big picture though is that cpp I a safer language. A core library might be written in c for whatever reason. But its good to provide a wrapper in a safer language for users to use.