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> You should probably judge usefulness the language by how much software was produced using it. Then Fortran and Cobol are probably the most useful languages (and maybe Java can be on that list too), but can we say that they're actually loved by those who program in them, or that they offer a modern and fast way of building software? Eventually, how much software was written in a language is mostly a function of how long that language has been around. > Do you have any data to support this? Just pick any news article about any large projects migrating from C/C++ to Go/Rust. C/C++ have historical issues with memory management that make it too easy for the code to blow up. The vast majority of CVEs is about vulnerabilities caused by improper memory allocation, deallocation or assignment. And, in order to mitigate some of those issues, C++ has become so complex that it makes it harder to shoot your foot, but easier to blow up your own leg. Sure, all FAANGs have been writing most of their core software in these languages, but they've also invested a lot of resources in building alternative languages that were simpler but equally performant/expressive. Keep in mind that FAANG companies have to onboard hundreds or thousands of engineers, and the cost of getting somebody to be proficient in Go, Rust, Python or Kotlin is much, much lower than getting somebody to be proficient in C++ - and, most of all, to get somebody in a position where they can reliably push code to production that doesn't blow up. |
Judging usefulness of a language based on news article doesn't sound like a good idea to me.
> Sure, all FAANGs have been writing most of their core software in these languages, but they've also invested a lot of resources in building alternative languages that were simpler but equally performant/expressive.
Sure they invested in new languages but don't forget they also invest much more in existing ones.