[ddtaylor]

C++ is a really great language and it gets a lot of bad press because many people use it very wrongly. Are there bad things you can do in C++? Surely! But I feel a large amount of the bad press it gets is because many _refuse_ to use RAII or refuse to use parts of the STL library that are battle-tested. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_acquisition_is_initia...)

There are a lot of reasons to learn C++, but the turnaround time isn't great. If you don't know the language at all right now the time it will take until you can likely provide meaningful changes to your team could be months away. One counter argument to that is that having fresh eyes on an old problem can yield useful results sometimes, similar to rubber ducking. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging)

As for C++ "not being around" anytime soon, very unlikely. C++ has outlived many languages and will continue to outlive many more. Virtually any major web browser you are using (or it's primary components) right now to view this page are C++ based. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit)