The biggest problem is we are using systems programming languages to develop applications. We need to use application programming languages to develop applications. C and C++ are systems programming languages, to be used for developing operating systems, device drivers and other low level stuff.

The problem is, we haven't had a real application programming language since the demise of Pascal / Delphi. And Java / C# have been able to pick-up some of the slack, but not nearly enough as there are still tons of software being written in unsafe languages.