[eklitzke]

This is vastly oversimplifying the problem, the difference between IPv4 and IPv6 is not just the format of the address. Different protocols have different features, which is why the sockaddr_in and sockaddr_in6 types don't just differ in the address field. Plus the vast majority of network programs are using higher level abstractions, for example even in C or C++ a lot of people would be using a network library like libevent or asio to handle a lot of these details (especially if you want to write code that easily works with TLS).