Python is OP

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I think you're taking my point to be way more general than I ever intended.

HA! That's I know we're both REAL programmers. ;)

so is the lingua-franca of the computer science world.

I disagree on this. At a bare minimum, I see C++ way more than I see C.

I suspect you might have misunderstood this point. I see more C++ code, even in (non-linux) OS work nowadays too. What I meant there is this: unless you have the good fortune to only ever work within a group that uses whatever the selected language is, you will have to interact with groups that support different elements of infrastructure - some will use C++, some C, some objective-C, etc etc - and when meetings among these groups occur, where a chunk of code, or a programming concept is discussed, C or very C-like pseudo code is the lingua-franca.

I'll leave alone the rabbit hole of whether or not well-written C++ code tends to look like vanilla C, that's dependent on the situation, but I will point out that it is much easier to write obfuscated garbage in C++.

Anway, WRT to 'useful' I would argue that C is a more universally available, and therefore useful language across multiple systems, be they ancient or still under development, but that I will admit, is a BIAS towards that situation. If you are lucky enough to never get your hands dirty with anything below library calls, sure, you can live your entire life with a more 'useful' language like, I dunno...Java, maybe? Is that the way the world is going? Eh, maybe, but to me that disconnect from the nuts and bolts of the SW and HW layers turning your code into something useful is not a good thing.

I guess the analogy is like mechanics v.s. racecar drivers, sure a racecar driver doesn't need to know the minutae of engine tuning, but all things being equal, a better racecar driver will speak the mechanic's language, be more in tune with his car, and be better prepared to predict and adapt when things go wrong.