[dreamer_]

I hate the feeling of falling behind in a language that really has no competition in the niche it fills.

Well, that's no longer true - Rust and Go are two contenders for C++'s "niche". They are still growing, but are already much nicer languages than C++. In some situations Erlang or Ocaml can also replace C++ successfully.

[cgh]

As much as I like Rust, it is in its infancy and it will be years before it gains similar traction, if it ever does. The other languages you mentioned are not in the same category (garbage collection alone excludes them).