Exactly, C++ has been around for a very long time, so much runs on it, depends on it, and it is not going anywhere any time in our lifetimes, I'm certain of tha

Exactly, C++ has been around for a very long time, so much runs on it, depends on it, and it is not going anywhere any time in our lifetimes, I'm certain of that. That makes it a very valuable skill. You can always study the newer languages when interested in them (I find them all fascinating), but for a deep leg into the way the industry works at its core, I think knowing C++ gets you very far. Google touts Go a lot, but so much of Google's tools are actually C++ at heart (protobufs and Chrome for example), and Apple touts Swift and has its own frameworks in Objective-C and now Swift, but under the hood, so much of their toolkits and the language of Swift itself are implemented in C++; nearly all cross-platform games we know and love for a wide variety of devices and OS are C++ -- my point is that it is a crucial language and it does not hurt to understand it.