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C and C++ will eventually die in the same way that COBOL has died. That is, they'll never go away, but there will be fewer and fewer people able and willing to

C and C++ will eventually die in the same way that COBOL has died. That is, they'll never go away, but there will be fewer and fewer people able and willing to use them.

tkinom 10y ago
I prefer data on evaluating a programming language's potential: Search indeed.com for C++ : 4287 jobs. golang : 71 jobs Java : 6817 jobs Rust : 7 jobs
- dcu 10y ago
  The go results are inaccurate because "go" is not searchable and most people write "go" instead of golang. Try searching for "backend go" in indeed.com and you'll see what I mean.
- jolux 10y ago
  Rust hit 1.0 18 months ago while everything else on that list is between 5-33 years old. Give it time.
- echelon 10y ago
  Rust is beginning to be evaluated by large tech companies for production use (I can attest). When companies start using it and blogging about it, other companies will catch on and do the same. My money is on this number rising. Rust is something truly special, and I'd be shocked for it not to gain widespread usage.
- PopsiclePete 10y ago
  Trust me. You would not enjoy roughly the 92% of Java jobs out of that number. My Java work was easily the most corporatish "enteprise" soul-sucking nightmare that I'm glad to be out of forever. I bet the majority of the Golang jobs are fun, in small teams though. I know which one I'd rather work on.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    How much of that is Java's fault, though? Would those jobs be any less horrible if that software was written in COBOL or C++ plus CORBA? Probably not.
- jcbeard 10y ago
  This article is mostly poo with a few bits of goodness sprinkled in to detract from the stench. Now, directly to your comment, I usually evaluate on the ability to get things done. Often that means libraries. Linking to C/C++ libraries is relatively easy so I'd say there is a lot of potential. If you go back in time to 1996, how many jobs were there for Java? I doubt that many, probably took a few years...even with Sun pushing it. C/C++, even Fortran are going to be around for a long time. Languages like Swift get a good kick in the rear by sheer force of Apple's market share. Rust has only the user community to adopt it. Adoption is fairly easy, market penetration is tough (lots of adopters). It'll either happen or it won't.
- loudmax 10y ago
  That isn't a programming language's potential. Those job posts reflect current market demand, not potential. How much demand will there be for Rust programmers three or four or ten years from now, not just today. Anyway, if you're going to take a purely mercantile approach to evaluating programming languages, you should consider the salaries these employers are offering rather than the number of job listings. Consider supply as well as demand.
- greydius 10y ago
  I also prefer data, but this data isn't useful. Sure, there are a lot of companies looking to hire C++ programmers, but why? Is it because of growth in the demand for C++ application development? Or is it because C++ developers are moving on and the companies are having trouble replacing them? There's probably a mixture of both, but I believe we're going to see a continuing slide towards the latter.
orf 10y ago
Maybe, but while COBOL was/is used in a few big mainframes C/C++ is used on the billions of devices everywhere, throughout the entire stack. Upgrading/deprecating them is not an easy task.
- eximius 10y ago
  But Rust has fairly good interop so its feasible to move on, leaving the old code in place where applicable.
- kibwen 10y ago
  Given that consumer devices have a notoriously higher turnover rate than business machines (international or otherwise), all legacy languages will eventually trend toward COBOL-like retention curves.
  - the_trapper 10y ago
    You're making the flawed assumption that all consumer devices have a brand new stack of software written for them, which is absolutely false. Every popular OS kernel in use today is primarily written in C and C++. Most consumer devices are running some flavor of a *nix kernel (mostly Linux, with a healthy smattering of the BSDs as well). People have been predicting the death of C and C++ for decades now and those two languages are as strong today as they ever were. BASIC and Pascal were supposed to kill them in the 80s on microcomputers. Java was supposed to kill them in the 90s, now people think Rust will do it, but history shows that to be pretty unlikely. C and C++ have an immense amount of inertia that is unlikely to be stopped any time soon.
    - kibwen 10y ago
      > You're making the flawed assumption that all consumer > devices have a brand new stack of software written for > them, which is absolutely false. Except that, in practice, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone all had brand new stacks of software written for them. :P > People have been predicting the death of C and C++ for > decades now Except that Java did kill C++ in the business application space. And Perl did kill C in the system administration space. New languages have been driving these two languages into ever-more specific niches for decades. Also, I'm not sure why you're talking about C and C++ as though they're the same language. C's biggest long-term strength is ubiquitous platform support, and those platforms do not support C++. I see C as being unassailable in this space. But C++ is doing its damnedest to cling to the low-level application niche, and while it's going to continue to dominate there for the foreseeable future Rust is going to give it a run for its money. In the meantime, Rust doesn't need to kill C++ to be successful. Rust's best niche--that is, safety-hardened low-level applications--is more than lucrative enough to sustain it, especially with a major player like Mozilla proving its utility. And thanks to this same safety, Rust is seeing use in niches that C++ has never gained traction in, such as being a language for writing extensions for dynamic language runtimes (traditionally a task for C).

C and C++ will eventually die in the same way that COBOL has died. That is, they'll never go away, but there will be fewer and fewer people able and willing to use them.

tkinom 10y ago

I prefer data on evaluating a programming language's potential: Search indeed.com for C++ : 4287 jobs. golang : 71 jobs Java : 6817 jobs Rust : 7 jobs

dcu 10y ago
The go results are inaccurate because "go" is not searchable and most people write "go" instead of golang. Try searching for "backend go" in indeed.com and you'll see what I mean.
jolux 10y ago
Rust hit 1.0 18 months ago while everything else on that list is between 5-33 years old. Give it time.
echelon 10y ago
Rust is beginning to be evaluated by large tech companies for production use (I can attest). When companies start using it and blogging about it, other companies will catch on and do the same. My money is on this number rising. Rust is something truly special, and I'd be shocked for it not to gain widespread usage.
PopsiclePete 10y ago
Trust me. You would not enjoy roughly the 92% of Java jobs out of that number. My Java work was easily the most corporatish "enteprise" soul-sucking nightmare that I'm glad to be out of forever. I bet the majority of the Golang jobs are fun, in small teams though. I know which one I'd rather work on.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  How much of that is Java's fault, though? Would those jobs be any less horrible if that software was written in COBOL or C++ plus CORBA? Probably not.
jcbeard 10y ago
This article is mostly poo with a few bits of goodness sprinkled in to detract from the stench. Now, directly to your comment, I usually evaluate on the ability to get things done. Often that means libraries. Linking to C/C++ libraries is relatively easy so I'd say there is a lot of potential. If you go back in time to 1996, how many jobs were there for Java? I doubt that many, probably took a few years...even with Sun pushing it. C/C++, even Fortran are going to be around for a long time. Languages like Swift get a good kick in the rear by sheer force of Apple's market share. Rust has only the user community to adopt it. Adoption is fairly easy, market penetration is tough (lots of adopters). It'll either happen or it won't.
loudmax 10y ago
That isn't a programming language's potential. Those job posts reflect current market demand, not potential. How much demand will there be for Rust programmers three or four or ten years from now, not just today. Anyway, if you're going to take a purely mercantile approach to evaluating programming languages, you should consider the salaries these employers are offering rather than the number of job listings. Consider supply as well as demand.
greydius 10y ago
I also prefer data, but this data isn't useful. Sure, there are a lot of companies looking to hire C++ programmers, but why? Is it because of growth in the demand for C++ application development? Or is it because C++ developers are moving on and the companies are having trouble replacing them? There's probably a mixture of both, but I believe we're going to see a continuing slide towards the latter.

orf 10y ago

Maybe, but while COBOL was/is used in a few big mainframes C/C++ is used on the billions of devices everywhere, throughout the entire stack. Upgrading/deprecating them is not an easy task.

eximius 10y ago
But Rust has fairly good interop so its feasible to move on, leaving the old code in place where applicable.
kibwen 10y ago
Given that consumer devices have a notoriously higher turnover rate than business machines (international or otherwise), all legacy languages will eventually trend toward COBOL-like retention curves.
- the_trapper 10y ago
  You're making the flawed assumption that all consumer devices have a brand new stack of software written for them, which is absolutely false. Every popular OS kernel in use today is primarily written in C and C++. Most consumer devices are running some flavor of a *nix kernel (mostly Linux, with a healthy smattering of the BSDs as well). People have been predicting the death of C and C++ for decades now and those two languages are as strong today as they ever were. BASIC and Pascal were supposed to kill them in the 80s on microcomputers. Java was supposed to kill them in the 90s, now people think Rust will do it, but history shows that to be pretty unlikely. C and C++ have an immense amount of inertia that is unlikely to be stopped any time soon.
  - kibwen 10y ago
    > You're making the flawed assumption that all consumer > devices have a brand new stack of software written for > them, which is absolutely false. Except that, in practice, Android, iOS, and Windows Phone all had brand new stacks of software written for them. :P > People have been predicting the death of C and C++ for > decades now Except that Java did kill C++ in the business application space. And Perl did kill C in the system administration space. New languages have been driving these two languages into ever-more specific niches for decades. Also, I'm not sure why you're talking about C and C++ as though they're the same language. C's biggest long-term strength is ubiquitous platform support, and those platforms do not support C++. I see C as being unassailable in this space. But C++ is doing its damnedest to cling to the low-level application niche, and while it's going to continue to dominate there for the foreseeable future Rust is going to give it a run for its money. In the meantime, Rust doesn't need to kill C++ to be successful. Rust's best niche--that is, safety-hardened low-level applications--is more than lucrative enough to sustain it, especially with a major player like Mozilla proving its utility. And thanks to this same safety, Rust is seeing use in niches that C++ has never gained traction in, such as being a language for writing extensions for dynamic language runtimes (traditionally a task for C).