The Bottom Line
Having been drawn back to C and C++ by Ruby, I find it very interesting to notice that a lot of GNU and Open Source projects use C or C++ as their language of choice. (Indeed, Ruby itself is written in C, and hence can run on practically every platform that has a C compiler.) One of the first GNU projects was GCC, probably the most widely ported of the C and C++ compilers. (GCC now supports other languages than just C and C++.) C is also the systems programming language for most variants of the UNIX operating system.
What this means for developers is that the future of C and C++ is secure for a long time. Other languages might have nicer development environments and be marginally more productive, but for the core business logic of mission-critical applications I still prefer C and C++. I'd choose other languages for the rapidly evolving parts of the application such as the user interface and the web front-end, but for the core of the application I have nothing but praise for C and C++.