Why isn’t the SDK written in C++?

[Jeffrey Haynes]

This may be an unpopular question but the Nordic SDK seems to go to great length to perform what is effectively object-oriented programming while still avoiding c++. This leads to, among other things, an overly complex sdk rife with macro string concatenation and other evils. In our project we spent the first six months wrapping every part of the sdk into a coherent object model. The wrapping was painful but paid off dividends when we went to actually do the real work. 

Hopefully I don’t need to extol the virtues of c++ in embedded systems. Others have already done that for years: https://www.embedded.com/design/programming-languages-and-tools/4438660/Modern-C--in-embedded-systems---Part-1--Myth-and-Reality

Has Nordic considered this?  It would make your products much more attractive, at least to us. 

[ovrebekk]

Hi Jeff

We don't have any plans to rewrite the SDK in C++, no, but in general we try to make sure it is compliant. 

Then you can choose to write the application in C++, even if the lower level drivers and libraries are written in C. 

Best regards
Torbjørn

[Nguyen Hoan Hoang]

Really?! 

These kind of defines bellow are not compilable in C++ and there are tons of them in the SDK.

#define BLE_DB_DISCOVERY_DEF(_name)                                                                 \ 
static ble_db_discovery_t _name = {.discovery_in_progress = 0,                                      \ 
                                   .discovery_pending     = 0,                                      \ 
                                   .conn_handle           = BLE_CONN_HANDLE_INVALID};               \ 
NRF_SDH_BLE_OBSERVER(_name ## _obs,                                                                 \ 
                     BLE_DB_DISC_BLE_OBSERVER_PRIO,                                                 \ 
                     ble_db_discovery_on_ble_evt, &_name)

[Jeffrey Haynes]

Precisely. We spent days “porting” this sort of thing to C++. There are clearly some C devs at Nordic who simply can’t be bothered to learn a new language.