It surely isn't, otherwise we wouldn't be getting wind back into going native sails, with Swift, Rust, Go, Crystal, D, .NET Native, CoreRT, Java 9 (just a little bit, more with 10)....
Fyi, when safety is important and C++ is the only viable alternative, there's SaferCPlusPlus[1].
And wrt new C++17 features, I'll just point out that the SaferCPlusPlus library provides a version of std::any (and std::variant) geared specifically for pointer/iterators. That is, you can, for example, dereference the contained pointer/iterator without needing to know its actual type. And for those that need it, it also provides the "recursive_shared_timed_mutex" that's notably missing from the standard library.
[1] shameless plug: https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus
If C++ is your only hammer then every problem looks like a nail to you. Of course, there are viable alternatives. At least Ada which is still used in avionics and other safety critical systems.
Like Ariane 5? :->
The crash was caused in part by failing to catch an exception in Ada.
http://sunnyday.mit.edu/accidents/Ariane5accidentreport.html
http://compgroups.net/comp.lang.ada/ariane5-faq/1406823
And yes, Ada is still used today.
Ada is an interesting language (we were taught it as our first language at uni), but it's not free from safety issues.
The flaws C++ were the reasons why Rust was invented. Mozilla wanted a safe language for the next generation of browsers, and they realized that C++ is not a good choice for safe programming.
Quote: "Mozilla intends to use Rust as a platform for prototyping experimental browser architectures. Specifically, the hope is to develop a browser that is more amenable to parallelization than existing ones, while also being less prone to common C++ coding errors."
Source: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-Mozilla-developing-the-Rust-lan...
As much as I complain about C++, I just don't think there's a viable alternative, and I somewhat reject the notion that writing performant code is a niche thing. Like, sure, there are common contexts where you can get away with wasting CPU, but IMO part of being a skilled professional programmer is getting the most out of the machine, and you just can't do that with most other languages.