[sqeaky]

I would disagree that C++ is only useful "near the hardware" I have spent the bulk of my career not near the hardware and have found C++ to be the most useful of languages I have learned. My current job is as close to the hardware as I have gotten, I am even on the "Firmware Team" and I feel pretty removed.

If you need interop between two languages you almost always have to drop to C, if you want to do that while keeping high level concepts like object, then use C++.

If you need more performance and you have already maxed out perf in some "higher" language. Then a naive C++ rewrite is often just faster. Then when you start breaking out C++ profiling tools and carefully managing memory you get insane speeds that didn't seem possible before.

With some of new stuff in C++11/14/17 it is actually fun to work in C++, not as fun as Ruby... up until 3d things start appearing on the screen.

[ksk]

>I would disagree that C++ is only useful "near the hardware"

Okay, but I didn't say that? I said C++ has limited uses, _unless_ you're near the hardware, where its much more common. You can disagree, but its better if you disagree with what I actually said :P

But to your reply, Personally, I don't agree that C++ is fun to work with. Like any other language, I tolerate it as and when I need to. And like I said in the previous reply, sometimes C++ is the only choice, and you accept that and do the best you can. I've found that good tooling does reduce some of the headaches, especially when it comes to debugging (although stepping through optimized production code still remains a giant pain in the ass). I'm happy that the language is progressing and with all of the new features, its like a cafeteria where you chose what you like and what works for you and your team. I certainly don't agree with all the advice that the C++ cheerleaders put out on the internet about inserting every new feature into production code. Personally I take a very conservative approach and only use features that have shown tobe useful across the entire dev cycle of - helping to conceptualize an idea, being easy to reason about by everyone on the team, being easy to debug, and being reliable enough for 24/7 execution (though this applies more to the library side of things). My code runs automation machinery, and it has to have zero bugs in it. I choose C++ because currently its the best tool for the job.

[sqeaky]

I figured that by providing examples of where C++ was required that cases near those were it is used but not required would be evident.

In pretty much every type of application domain there are a large number of C++ applications. It is used in finance, business, games, medical, as you point out it is used very close to the hardware particularly when that hardware is custom and image the web with many fewer browsers and servers. The only kind of developer that might outnumber C++ devs is Java devs because there are so many custom internal enterprise applications that place higher emphasis on being barely functional than performant (and they are largely correct in their decision).

I find no need for your needlessly specific separation of limited vs whatever my wording used. I hope that whatever your take from this, should you choose to continuing nitpick, is that C++ is hugely useful in many places it just is new and glamorous so it doesn't get much press.

[0xbear]

Fun to work with? Perhaps not. But 99% of the software you're using to post your reply (and generally do just about anything on your computer) is written in some derivative of C or C++. So C++ has that going for it, which is nice.