This may be a dumb question, but are there any benefits in learning c instead of going straight to c++ for microcontrollers? I'm in my first ee semester and wondered, because we are learning c and java (next semester), but not c++

From stack overflow
You want the performance of assembler without the trouble of coding in assembler (C++ is, in theory, capable of 'perfect' performance, but the compilers aren't as good at seeing optimizations a good C programmer will see)The software you're writing is trivial, or nearly so - whip out the tiny C compiler, write a few lines of code, compile and you're all set - no need to open a huge editor with helpers, no need to write practically empty and useless classes, deal with namespaces, etc. You can do nearly the same thing with a C++ compiler and simply use the C subset, but the C++ compiler is slower, even for tiny programs.You need extreme performance or small code size, and know the C++ compiler will actually make it harder to accomplish due to the size and performance of the libraries

@liverreich thanks!