I suppose you're aware C# also has implicit conversion operators, operator overloading, reflection, aspect oriented programming, compiler plugins, interceptors.

Seems strange to talk down C++ while praising C#, which incidentally has been getting features to increase its use where Microsoft previously might have used C++ instead.

You catch pitfalls in any language the same way, using static analysis, which C authors introduced right in 1979, acknowledging the issues with language, which they decided to outsource to another tool, instead of improving the language.

A long tradition in computing.

Yes, C# is becoming more and more complex, but IMO C++ is still in a class of its own. Just compare how many different, sometimes competing ways there are to initialize variables in C++, each with its own subtleties.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here. And of course, even if C++'s user base seems to be shrinking, it still works well for some categories of programmers.

Even if it is shrinking, people leaving C++ aren't racing to go back to C, rather to languages with similar expressive type systems.

Swift, C#, Kotlin, Scala, Rust, Typescript, Python...