All in all, I have to acknowledge that they have made quite a good choice: Real C/c++ so users can get advanced but only expose/document a reasonable subset.
I think they made a brilliant choice and is a big factor for the tremendous popularity of the Arduino platform. They took a lot of flack early on from many of the established microcontroller 'expert' users and sites, but once explained that none of the Arduino 'short cuts', terminology, and predefined functions prevents one from using the full power of the C/C++ language that criticism as dropped down to a small noise factor.
Lefty