I disagree - somewhat.

I've spent 4 years of my life programming C and almost 20 programming C++.

By today, C++20 is really quite good. We have established nice neat ways to avoid pretty well all the footguns. Overall, the quality of the code generated is amongst the best of all languages.

The metaprogramming system has become mature and with C++23's Concepts, which are already available in the big three mainstream compilers, we'll get a second order typing system, which in practice corresponds to clearer and shorter interfaces, somewhat less code, better error messages and somewhat faster compilation.

If you saw a modern C++ program you might suspect it was a different language.

As for "mixing C with C++" , when you are on a C++ project, you don't care about C backwards compatibility, but you can nearly always call C libraries seamlessly. It's just not a problem.

Occasionally you need to do `extern "C" {` or name mangling stuff but I haven't done that in... over ten years, and it's all heavily documented these days.

So C++ a pretty good language which generates excellent object code, with a lot of history and experience and tooling around it, and some world-class programmers involved in its language and compiled development, and an actually exciting roadmap for future development.

All that said, it would not be my first choice for future brand-new development, but a complete answer to that would be a big can of worms to open.