Because what I can clearly express in one line of swift/haskell/etc is often like 15 lines of nasty in C/C++. And when I make a mistake, the former has around

Because what I can clearly express in one line of swift/haskell/etc is often like 15 lines of nasty in C/C++. And when I make a mistake, the former has around a 90% chance of telling me about it immediately whereas the later is maybe 30%. When you're dealing with a couple person decades of code, that really really matters. It's kind of like building a house using a rock instead of a hammer. It works. But after a few years building houses with a rock....when you try out a nailgun for the first time......yea not going back to that insanity. Of course sometimes a rock is your only choice...embedded, and a few other domains, but I'm never writing another line of C++ unless it's genuinely the only language that can solve the problem. To be fair, if you stick with EE, then yea it may be your only choice most of the time. Also, as a counterpoint to the C++ makes more $$ comments. I doubled my salary(and got way more job offers) going from embedded C to iOS dev. Most of that's attributable to moving out of an economic backwater, but C/C++ is not necessarily a magic ticket to more cash. Being the company expert in C++ might be, but then so is being the company expert in <whatever>. I'd be lucky to see any increase at all moving back to C.