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>>, and that gives an approximate value of how using specific languages maps into monetary loss, and why companies are starting to care nowadays, given computer

>>, and that gives an approximate value of how using specific languages maps into monetary loss, and why companies are starting to care nowadays, given computers are always exposed to the world network. You need also factor development time and ease of finding developers willing to work in a specific language. There are other factors like readability of the code (very verbose languages are likely to be worse) and cost of maintenance - languages forcing a lot of abstractions are likely much worse.

acdha 2mo ago
> You need also factor development time and ease of finding developers willing to work in a specific language This even more strongly favors Rust or Swift. Nobody is writing C or even Objective-C in 2026 as a growth language.
- zbentley 2mo ago
  If you just meant apple-targeting developers, then yeah; you're right that those languages are in decline. But if you meant developers in general, I think you'd be surprised how many growth sectors are hiring C programmers. They're often not SaaS tech companies, but they are massive and many are growing. Hardware, industrial control systems, defense/aerospace ... there's a ton there, the spaces in which they hire just don't overlap a ton with the spaces frequented by hacker news. Also, a lot of them aren't US based companies. I hope that changes over time, since I definitely agree that the downsides of C-family languages massively outweigh the downsides of competitor languages.
  - pjmlp 2mo ago
    Which is why WG14 and WG21 caring about security would be quite relevant, but alas, priorities. C could have gotten slices already in the 90's, the concept already existed in other languages, and even Dennis Ritchie made a fat pointer proposal into that sense. The others, let see if anything related to profiles actually gets into C++29.
  - acdha 2mo ago
    [dead]
zbentley 2mo ago
> very verbose languages are likely to be worse Citation needed. I don't think there's a correlation there. Over-architected Java spaghetti is verbose and unmaintainable. Under-architected Perl code golf that metastisized is terse and unmaintainable. > languages forcing a lot of abstractions are likely much worse Citation needed. C++ has had some very high-level abstractions on top of a low-level runtime for awhile, and plenty of people have decided to use it and hire for it regardless. What counts as an "abstraction" or "forced abstraction" is a very very subjective topic.
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  Even C can be super abstracted, see early 1980-90's business software written in C, with nice stuff like Yourdon Structured Method, leading to over-architected C spaghetti with macros, a decade before Java came to be. The problem is the lack of interest since Morris worm came to be, to provide better mechanisms in said languages, until governments and key big tech names decided it was time to change existing practices.

acdha 2mo ago

> You need also factor development time and ease of finding developers willing to work in a specific language This even more strongly favors Rust or Swift. Nobody is writing C or even Objective-C in 2026 as a growth language.

zbentley 2mo ago
If you just meant apple-targeting developers, then yeah; you're right that those languages are in decline. But if you meant developers in general, I think you'd be surprised how many growth sectors are hiring C programmers. They're often not SaaS tech companies, but they are massive and many are growing. Hardware, industrial control systems, defense/aerospace ... there's a ton there, the spaces in which they hire just don't overlap a ton with the spaces frequented by hacker news. Also, a lot of them aren't US based companies. I hope that changes over time, since I definitely agree that the downsides of C-family languages massively outweigh the downsides of competitor languages.
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  Which is why WG14 and WG21 caring about security would be quite relevant, but alas, priorities. C could have gotten slices already in the 90's, the concept already existed in other languages, and even Dennis Ritchie made a fat pointer proposal into that sense. The others, let see if anything related to profiles actually gets into C++29.
- acdha 2mo ago
  [dead]

zbentley 2mo ago

> very verbose languages are likely to be worse Citation needed. I don't think there's a correlation there. Over-architected Java spaghetti is verbose and unmaintainable. Under-architected Perl code golf that metastisized is terse and unmaintainable. > languages forcing a lot of abstractions are likely much worse Citation needed. C++ has had some very high-level abstractions on top of a low-level runtime for awhile, and plenty of people have decided to use it and hire for it regardless. What counts as an "abstraction" or "forced abstraction" is a very very subjective topic.

pjmlp 2mo ago
Even C can be super abstracted, see early 1980-90's business software written in C, with nice stuff like Yourdon Structured Method, leading to over-architected C spaghetti with macros, a decade before Java came to be. The problem is the lack of interest since Morris worm came to be, to provide better mechanisms in said languages, until governments and key big tech names decided it was time to change existing practices.