C and C++ are effectively immortal at this point. This is due to the fact that they've been king of the hill in systems for decades. Effectively the only choice for that domain. If you enjoy C++ more power to you. But there are those like myself who have experienced writing code in e.g. Python and Haskell and with those backgrounds find C and C++ especially unpalatable. This is part of why there's so much excitement for Rust - it has many of the features application programmers are used to (such as package management via Cargo) and is also proven capable of competing with C and C++. That's never happened before.
There is also another reason, domains where they are the only game in town, e.g. HPC, and any newcomer needs decades to get into the club.
As for not happening before, Delphi and Turbo/Object Pascal on the PC and Mac worlds beg to differ, unfortunately C++ adoption from the OS owners pushed them away.
