I once spent 3 years on a C project and I realized it's strength is that it does not change. I didn't feel the need to rewrite it with latest features like one might with C++

Pretty much all (modern) HPC I'm aware of is C++. Now I'd be the first one to agree researchers aren't the best programmers, but I also think that is not the only thing that matters. C++ allows huge teams to cooperate in getting a lot of stuff done (there isn't a single CERN result that isn't verified against C++ generated data for instance).

C++ is like a natural language at this point: very crufty and layered, hard to use sometimes, even ugly, but you can do a ton with it and if you work with the language you can even write poetry in it ;)

You can do better than that, Drew.

Easy there, Linus