<p>
I will have to disagree with that.
C++ is indeed just a language like any other. But it is useful for many of the things it does emphasize: machine code, efficiency, syntax that doesn’t really do as much for you as simpler languages, etc. Very annoying to start with and I understand why schools start with Java, Python, Scheme, etc. instead, but you can’t really do most of the higher level stuff with those languages because they take the most difficult and confusing aspects of the language away from the control of the user.</p>
<p>My point is that learning to do Java makes you a programmer, someone who can write useful code. But CS is about more than that. Neither Python nor Java let you use pointers, one of the most important aspects of any more complex code design. Very understandable choice, but you need to know how to do those things in order to design larger and more complex pieces of code.</p>
<p>Not that C++ in and of itself is the core of CS - it’s just, in my opinion (and in that of most schools I know of), it’s the most useful one that has low-level (i.e. machine code) features.</p>