The tough truth is that it is much easier to make a popular thing better, than to make an excellent thing popular.

Once C++ is good enough to prosper and is popular at the same time, then it is more reasonable to improve C++ rather than to make people switch to better alternatives, that definitely exist.

Another argument is that any problem in software development could be solved by introducing a new programming language... except for the problem of already having too many programming languages.

And the problem of too many languages is a real one.

The idea of free and open source is that people shouldn't do the same thing over and over again. They should be able to reuse what others already did. For generic tasks there should be generic solutions that one can take and use, or take, improve, and use.

But the reality is that there are too many languages, and too many generic tasks, and new generic tasks appear often. Every time some popular standard is updated, implementations of this standard has to be updated in all languages.

For a language to maintain up to date ecosystem of libraries, hundreds of developers have to work full time. This is possible for a few of the most popular languages, but not for the hundreds of less popular, yet exciting languages.

C++ is one of these lucky languages that has community strong enough to maintain up to date ecosystem. This is its real strength, not the syntax or semantics. This is what people should value and preserve, while syntax could be improved at any time.