No argument on superior, it's just that superior doesn't win the day. Look at C++. Look at JavaScript. It would be surprising if the industry made the better choice for a change.
Hmm--with some edge-case exceptions that never got a strong push outside of some niches (Ada comes to mind, where it achieved some traction in DoD circles), I wonder if C++ wasn't the superior choice given its time and place. By no means is it perfect, but in the early to mid 90's there weren't many competitors with a similar feature set that had anybody pushing hard behind it. To my mind it seems not dissimilar.
If I have to write native code, right now it'll be C++ precisely because it's able to express complex problems with a high degree of getting-it-right (because while I would never claim to understand C++, I feel confident in my understanding of the subset of C++ that I use). I really like Rust and look forward to it being a better fit for what I want to do, and every time I look at it it's getting closer.
