In regards to the first question, no, starting with C is not a good idea. The libraries are laughably bad, you need to do things that are just horrifically primitive by modern language standards ( manaully null terminating strings? ). Frankly too, C is more or less obsolete, outside of embedded systems and a few other niche markets.
I agree most of the standard C library is annoyingly cumbersome to work with, but when I suggested starting with C I did so because the syntax of the language is (for the most part) a subset of C++ and relatively easy to approach. I am quite sure you will agree that learning C++ is easier if you already know C.
First off, the majority of C++ houses these days don't even roll their own engines anymore, it's just a piss poor use of time.
True, but that's because they do it for the money; not for the challenge.