It is more usual to use millis() for timing on the Arduino. Unless you need to keep exact time for periods longer than a day. Then you need an RTC chip. (Real time clock.)
C is easier to learn for most people. It took me decades to get my head into the object-oriented parts of C++. But C is a subset of C++ so you can write "your" code in C and still use C++ objects like the Serial object without understanding how objects work.