I like to use STL. It's not perfect, but it makes life easier.
Several people said that using cout instead of printf and using several container templates instead of pseudo-generic void* C-style containers wouldn't blow my executables to extraordinary large sizes.
In fact, the /are/ blown, and not just some kb.
I'm not sure about who's blowing them up.
Is this because MSVC doesn't know how to optimize templates or is this a C++ specific problem ?
My executables get usually arround 60k - 80k, althought the're just doing a print that 800 bytes of compiled asm would do.
I also experienced that .NET based applications are a /lot/ smaller than my ones. Even with GDI they are arround 15k.
A friend's writing almost straight C and get's API executables with GDI arround 20-30k.
I actually /did/ learn C++ because i wanted to write templated, class based code without getting my executables auto-blown up.
Are your executables also excessively blown up ? What compilers do you use ? Am I just to blind to find the compiler switch ?