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petcat • today at 7:55 PM • 12 replies • view on HN

At this point, is anybody writing new C or C++? It seems like they are sunset languages even at the big corps.


Replies

fasterik • today at 8:04 PM

I'm pretty sure most big software projects (Windows, Linux, Chrome, gcc, LLVM, AAA game engines, ...) are still writing a lot of new C and C++. Pretty much everyone in the embedded world is as well.

As a solo programmer, I still prefer C and C++. In fact, as I've incorporated LLMs in to my workflow, I've been increasingly drawn toward C and its simplicity. A lot of the QoL features of C++ simply aren't needed when you're writing less code manually.

npalli • today at 8:26 PM

Far from it. Until Rust can read C++ code seamlessly, there will be more code written in C++ than Rust for the foreseeable future. HPC, Finance, AI, Games, Databases, Hardware all continue to be written in C++.

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xedrac • today at 9:00 PM

Unfortunately for me, yes. Some companies are very risk adverse and would rather stick with the devil they know. They have no idea what they are sacrificing.

j1elo • today at 8:39 PM

Today I went over a TODO comment from 2007 in a C++ codebase that is still evolving very vividly, year after year. Trust me, for well established projects C++ is there to stay.

loeg • today at 8:04 PM

Plenty of new C++ going on at my BigCorp employer.

skohan • today at 8:13 PM

C/C++ is still relevant for HPC, where you want to carefully optimize memory management.

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pjmlp • today at 8:54 PM

Games, anything that depends on LLVM, GCC, CUDA, SYSCL,....

Ah and Rust's compiler backend dependency on LLVM and in the future GCC as well.

neutronicus • today at 8:01 PM

C++ seems alive and well in the defense space. The big contractors near me have tons of C++ job postings and I don't think I've seen a single one looking for Rust.

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tkz1312 • today at 7:58 PM

I've been extracting a lot of verified C from theorem provers recently.

pornel • today at 9:16 PM

Cloudflare is all in on Rust, it's used everywhere by default, and C++ leftovers are being actively torn down.

IshKebab • today at 8:20 PM

Yes mine is, because they have a huge amount of C++ already and none of it is publicly accessible so security isn't a concern. (Obviously there are many other reasons to prefer Rust, but that is a big one.)

icase • today at 7:56 PM

grownups with important jobs write C

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