C++ lends itself well to large-scale, performance-intensive, cross-platform software. Rust could in theory be used for similar projects. Using C to learn point

C++ lends itself well to large-scale, performance-intensive, cross-platform software. Rust could in theory be used for similar projects. Using C to learn pointers & data structures gives students just enough rope to hang themselves later if they want to use C in a real project. I'd go for an STL-heavy C++ and dig into the memory handling and pitfalls. Students need to understand how to solve resource management issues in low-level programming. Since they're essentially unsolvable in C (be careful, try harder, use valgrind & pray), it doesn't seem like a good teaching language.