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0 pointsPacabel12y ago0 comments

Well, pretty much any time that Java, C# or Go are being used, C and/or C++ are also being used. We can't forget that their major implementations are built with C and/or C++, along with much of the underlying software they run upon or interact with.

I don't dispute that languages like Java, C# and Go being widely used. And while the systems built with them may be critical within a very local scope, such as at the company level, pretty much all software of global importance is still implemented in C, C++, or some mix of the two. This is true almost 20 years after Java came on the scene, almost 15 years after C# did, and almost 5 years Go did.

Go is perhaps the only case where this may change, given how its implementors have expressed interest in porting their existing C code to Go. But that still won't change the fact that the operating systems, databases, and other software systems that Go code often interacts with are still very likely to be implemented using C and/or C++.

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pkolaczk11y ago

Are Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or GMail systems of global importance? If they are not, I'm really curious what is your definition of global importance. Their core functionality has been developed in languages such as Java, Scala, PHP and JavaScript. And when looking at the lowest level, everything runs on OSes written in C (Linux, Solaris), webservers written in C or Java (!), and databases / datawarehouses written in C and Java (!), so even your argument that C++ is being used for all the low-level critical stuff is strongly exaggerated.

Sure, as I said, C++ has some place, but nowhere near being the one and only language to implement such stuff, including database engines, webservers and operating systems.

Dewie12y ago

> Well, pretty much any time that Java, C# or Go are being used, C and/or C++ are also being used. We can't forget that their major implementations are built with C and/or C++, along with much of the underlying software they run upon or interact with.

I don't agree. If someone is programming in Python, they are programming in Python. They aren't programming in C, in addition to Python, just because the VM or whatever is programmed in C. If some language displaces C or C++ in some niche, then it has displaced it, even if the VM of the implementation of the language happens to be written in C or C++. The important distinction, I think, is what people are programming in.

This is like saying that "nothing has proven to be viable alternatives to cement for building houses" when talking about building entire houses with cement, if the foundation of houses are always made up of cement. The fact that the rest of the house can be built with other materials like wood or bricks is a crucial point, in that context.