C++ is very much underappriciated. Many of the preconceived notions about memory management, etc are out dated. If you follow best practices C++ becomes the fastest, most expressive language there is.

Unfortunately, C++ takes a long time to compile because of some fundamental issues with the structure of include files. When using templates it consumes a ton of memory during compilation too. The good news is that what you pay for at compilation time often results in much better run time performance.

When it comes to smart contracts I am convinced that C++ is the best choice because of the power and expressiveness of its type system.