C++ exists because processing power and RAM used to be at a premium; these days, hardware is so cheap, you can get away with writing inefficient code in any lan

C++ exists because processing power and RAM used to be at a premium; these days, hardware is so cheap, you can get away with writing inefficient code in any language. However, two things are of note here: C++ has had a lot of higher level features bolted on after the fact, including compiler warnings and tools to help reduce burden on the programmer, and higher level languages have had a lot of performance "bolted on" (plus hardware has gotten so much faster and cheaper) so that if you code properly (in any language), performance differences are near negligible. C++ mostly hangs on because of backwards compatibility and a large user base; I suspect that as time goes on, we'll see it fall more and more by the wayside (and I say this as someone whose bread and butter is C++), especially with the fact that programmer time is a big cost driver.