The redeeming quality of C++ is that there's nothing better in its specific niches. The question to ask is: - do you just care about results: I need a program

The redeeming quality of C++ is that there's nothing better in its specific niches. The question to ask is: - do you just care about results: I need a program that produces these outputs when given these inputs - or do you care about what actually happens: I want the computer to do this, then this, then this, in exactly this way please. ...? It's usually a good idea only to care about the former -- the essence of functional programming, higher-order functions, etc., is to be able to focus on the former as much as possible -- and so long as you only care about the former C++ doesn't have much to recommend it except in special circumstances. On the other hand, there are times when what happens, exactly is important (eg: device drivers, other low-level code, directly interacting with hardware, etc.). In that scenario what C++ offers is a language that standardizes a lot of the functionality that most sufficiently-large raw-C programs have implemented in an ad-hoc basis. There are other ways of doing low-level code, but at the present time C++ is the best of bunch (or at least the safest choice if you have an eye to the long term), not so much b/c it's particularly awesome but b/c the others have either faded away for business or political reasons, or b/c the others made limiting choices (C++ makes very few decisions for you, which means it's equally suited -- or unsuited -- to every task in its particularly niche).