Unless they were of course the requirement for applicants be that they be assembly programmers Postaldave!
It is a fallacy that all or the majority of jobs call for C++ developers the majority of the time. I think the overriding factor will be whether the team is beginning at stage -1 or restructuring an existing system or project.
I get the gist of what you are saying, although I think it may be a case of some good points badly made.
The reason for recommending Pascal to 'beginners' (people who want to master programming of some form or another), is that it goes some way to encouraging (and enforcing) a method of laying out and writing that benefits from being more readable clearer sequentially and attemps to address some of the ambigious aspects of BASICs operators (the assignment in particular which doubles as a comparison operator which is was we commonly refer to as 'equals' this little fella '=' ).
Also I think I have to point out that anyone with their knowledge and mind in the right place would not begin to argue that one language is better. These are subjective arguments along the lines of whose way of abstracting the world is better. (What is in fact missing from such statements, to make them workable, objective arguments is to define better
is; better than what? Better at what?) While not deviating too far from what comp languages are about I feel this is as good an analogy as I can think up without financial encouragement.
No way of abstracting the world is superior in totality than another valid and logical abstraction. They all have their place and part of the mastery of them is to know when they are most apt and when they may lead you up the garden path.
{ Believe it or not almost all of us were noobs once upon a time (that was for the people who seem to actaully believe they were born coding, although sometimes it can seem like they must have been!). . . I don't think genetic engineering stretches to embryonic software engineers yet, so we all leave the womb as nooblike as the next earthling. The only thing that differentiates us comes later when some of us choose to forget this humble starting position faster than others and that perhaps we would not have got so far quite so quickly without the unconditional and timely guidance of the odd sould here and there. Pascal would have been my first language had I not met basic first. It's inevitable, its everywhere. }