> C++ doesn't take longer to compile if you don't abuse templates.
It actually does though, unless you also drop C++ stdlib usage completely (have you looked at how many lines of code just <vector> alone pulls into each source file? - it's upward of 20kloc and growing with each new C++ version).
And at that point you get into discussions with various C++ camps about why you don't use the C++ stdlib and instead prefer to reinvent the wheel (and this friction with other C++ coders is the main problem of carving out your own subset - it works ok in complete isolation, but software development work hardly happens in splendid isolation and even then you'd might to want to use C++ libraries written by other people from time to time...)
And once you've been dragged into such C++-subset-discussion month after month, year after year, at that point it is much less exhausting to just write plain C. And the C community (if it can be called that) seems to be much less concerned about coding style dogma and generally a nicer bunch to interact with.
FWIW, I switched around 2017 and each time I have to interact with a C++ library for lack of alternatives it's usually not a pleasant experience (with the notable exception of Dear ImGui - but even there I started to prefer the C bindings so that I don't need to strictly separate the UI code from the rest of the code base, which sometimes makes sense, but often not, especially with an immediate mode UI framework).