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by PopsiclePete 3080 days ago
>All languages that tried to fight complexity either grew up to adopt complexity and stay relevant, or faded away.

And yet, to this day, C is just as, if not more popular, than C++. Why is that? I can do so much more in C++, but I, and my colleagues, pick plain-old C every time.
2 comments
pjmlp 3080 days ago
Thanks Linux.

C was already on the way out when Linus created Linux.

Apple was migrating from Object Pascal to C++.

IBM had CSet++ for OS/2.

Borland, Microsoft, Zortech, Symatec were selling C++ frameworks.

UNIX vendors were playing with Taligent and CORBA.

BeOS and Symbian were developed in C++.

Then came Linus, made Linux with GNU on top.

GNU project for a long time always mentioned that the go to language for GNU projects should be C.

All major C compilers are written in C++ nowadays, there is hardly any reason to stay with C outside UNIX world.

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pvg 3080 days ago
C was already on the way out when Linus created Linux.

That seems a little... fanciful. There was a lot of C++ and it was a great way to show how modern and forward-looking you were (and to sell compilers, tools, frameworks) but standardization hadn't got far, interoperability was poor, problems great and small abounded. A number of the things you mention above were spectacularly unsuccessful.

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pjmlp 3080 days ago
Yes, C++ was a pain to write portability before 2000, but so was C, in spite of having been standardized in 1990, most compilers were a mix of K&R C and ANSI C.

Nevertheless, all major desktop OSes were going C++ for their application frameworks, before the widespread adoption of GNU software.

> A number of the things you mention above were spectacularly unsuccessful.

Mostly due to politics between corporations and very little to do with C++ itself.

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littlestymaar 3080 days ago
> but standardization hadn't got far

That's true, but not really fair: even ANSI C standard was only 2 years old at that time, despite C being way older than C++. Standardization takes a lot of time …

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pcwalton 3080 days ago
You're in the minority. For new projects, C is much less popular than C++.
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marrs 3079 days ago
It might not be that easy to tell. The C++ I write (for myself) is essentially plain C. No templates, dynamic dispatch, constructors, or exceptions. Most of the standard libs I use begin with the letter 'c'.

It uses some C++ features, but it's philosophically much closer to C code.

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pjmlp 3078 days ago
If it only compiles with a C++ compiler, it is C++, regardless of the amount of language features being used.
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marrs 3077 days ago
That's fine, but I don't think that's what people mean when they say C++. I certainly wouldn't call myself a C++ coder and, if I applied for a C++ job, I'm pretty sure that, after I had explained that I don't do exceptions, virtuals, or the STL, I'd be politely shown the door.
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