What exactly do I lose when using extern "C" in C++?
This question already has an answer here:
The only thing that gets dropped is name mangling of externally visible names. Function overloading by parameter types, as well as by parameter count, stop working as the result. Essentially, name resolution during the linking phase goes back to the plain old C mode (ie one name - one entry).
As far as the internals of your implementation go, you can continue using the standard library and all the other nice features of C++11. Only the names of externally visible entities get changed by extern C .