[ksk]

C++ is a tool for low level systems programming. Why would you compare that with GO? Also, I would argue that C++ is _WAY_ more popular than GO. It allows you to be productive in the real world, utilizing legacy code, legacy libraries, APIs, etc. Very few projects are 100% greenfield.

[iamnewhereqwer]

Many desktop apps are still written in C++.

[copx]

"Many" is an understatement here. Pretty much every Windows desktop app is written in C++ and Windows runs on over 90% of all desktops.

Adobe will never rewrite Photoshop in Rust or whatever. If you thought burying COBOL was hard.. C++ will outlast humanity.

I can already hear the Alien scientists: "An amazingly intricate and convoluted language for such a primitive species. The mismatch between their mental abilities and their language might explain the bug which caused the incident.."

[pjmlp]

As someone that has spent quite some years writing Windows software, actually since the .NET introduction and the maintenance status of MFC, the majority of Windows desktop apps are written in a mix of .NET and C++.

[rxhernandez]

> Pretty much every Windows desktop app is written in C++ and Windows runs on over 90% of all desktops.

I think you may be the one overstating things. Where I work, a biomedical device firm, for every one app written in C++ there is either one python or matlab prototype of it and 5 python/matlab apps to test it/show it off. I'm sure for other places that number is far higher. I honestly don't see how you could quickly prototype sufficiently complex ideas any other way.

Better said, I can build a working Kalman filter, load saved patient data to it, create a primitive db, save output data to said primitive db, build a primitive, but functional enough that non-technical people can use it, GUI, from scratch, to plot said output data in Python all in a couple hours. Can you do that with C++ for the same time frame? Heck can you do it within an order of magnitude of the time I used? If you can't, why should you be spending an order of magnitude more money for it?

[staticassertion]

You wouldn't have to rewrite Adobe. You could rewrite one component of it (0 cost FFI). That's fair more reasonable. I think Servo is proving that Rust has a lot of potential for slowly replacing a C++ codebase, piece by piece.

[pjmlp]

On Windows, Rust still has the problem that it needs to be as easy as C++ for working with COM, specially now with UWP.

[tonyedgecombe]

Is anybody using C++ with UWP? I would have thought the obvious choice was C#.

[pjmlp]

Yes, via C++/CX and when C++/WinRT gets ready by the end of the year, it will eventually replace C++/CX.

Also note that Blend has first class support for C++/CX projects.

https://moderncpp.com/2017/08/25/cppwinrt-2017/

Of course most developers using C++ with UWP is Microsoft itself, for stuff like XAML engine and the new Visual UI composition engine, and game devs.

XAML is also the official replacement for MFC.

As I mentioned in some other thread today, there is hardly any pure C++ application nowadays on Windows, they are mostly a mix of .NET and C++.

[ksk]

Sure, people will ultimately use the tool they think is right for the job, given the people they've hired, etc. C++'s strength isn't UI programming (might be generalized to things that require more input from designer's than programmers), but writing high-performance, low-abstraction code (which could very well be the dominant factor in the success of the desktop app, hence the choice).