One of two plenaries, (the other given by Scott Meyers). Scott, a very well-known educator and researcher in C++ presented the case for C++ and I presented a case for C, although most of what I said revolved around the fact that the language doesn’t seem to matter very much provided you know what you are doing. On this, we violently agreed. 
The two things that C has going for it by the way are first, that its potentially far more portable and secondly that its much simpler to learn which is of particular importance now that neither are taught much in universities. These both affect the bottom-line.
In the end, a most enjoyable debate which of course has no simple answer. Until we let engineers really get good at engineering without promoting them to be managers just as they are getting the hang of it, we won’t make much progress.
CvC++_LH_04-10-2010.pdf (408KB)
reference
Plenary at MISRA C Day, Stuttgart, Germany, 29th Sept 2010