I dunno, I was starting my career around 1980-81, and the choices were 6502/6509/Z80/8088 asm, C, UCSD-Pascal, and BASIC at the micro level, C/asm was the rule for RT-11/RSX-11 and then the VAX OSs at the "minicomputer" level.
I had a friend that tried to get everyone using Modula-2 but the "ecosystem" wasn't as great around the uni/ex-uni environments where I was.
C was pretty entrenched by the end of the 1980s, although I did use a weird embedded Pascal that was on HP-UX cross-compiling for Z80/8086 at the end of the decade, but they were the exception rather than the rule.
C++ was just a preprocessor for C and a "better C" at the time, people were still bitching about header files with function type signatures of "ANSI C" vs "good old-fashioned K&R".
Alone the fact that you mention RT-11/RSX-11 and VAX OSs shows we were not on the same bubble.
Anyway on VMS most folks would be found using the VMS BASIC compiler, VMS Pascal or Bliss, until Open VMS made it yet another UNIX clone.
My first C compiler used the RatC dialect, let alone having access to a proper K&R C compiler.
By 1992, I already had access to a proper C++ compiler on MS-DOS, and C was history to me, other than scenarios were work was expected to be done in C like some university assignments, even here we were blessed with a plethora of languages between Lisp, Prolog, Smalltalk, ML, C, C++,....
My bubble was obviously technically superior to your bubble. :)
And maybe it was 5/10 years earlier? Not sure. My uni days were the very early 1980s. Our university literally still made 1st years use marked sense (not even punch) cards.
I never ever liked C++, it always seemed to be tacked on to the side of C (literally at the start).
I liked the "better C" bits, but the "++" bits and the magic under the covers and then later the added layer of templates just seemed ridiculously complicated especially because we were still in the days of inheritance and "is-a" instead of "has-a" objects.
I loathed all the overloading that suddenly << meant something completely different when doing I/O and weird multiple function definitions to provide the generics.
Much preferred the Objective C idea of messages, was much more what I understood OOP to be after Smalltalk.
But by then I'd made the leap to being an "architect" and got to pontificate from on high and languages became semi-irrelevant.
I had a friend that tried to get everyone using Modula-2 but the "ecosystem" wasn't as great around the uni/ex-uni environments where I was.
C was pretty entrenched by the end of the 1980s, although I did use a weird embedded Pascal that was on HP-UX cross-compiling for Z80/8086 at the end of the decade, but they were the exception rather than the rule.
C++ was just a preprocessor for C and a "better C" at the time, people were still bitching about header files with function type signatures of "ANSI C" vs "good old-fashioned K&R".
We also tied onions to our belts...