Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by asynchronous13 4607 days ago
Microsoft's Office suite is primarily C++. There was an attempt to start using more C# a couple years ago, but it's still mostly C++.

On a closed-source project, it's hard to get the details. But the open source projects, however, we can get a very clear picture.

  OpenOffice: [1]
  10.4 million lines of C++
  1.2 million lines of Java

  *edit* noticed you mentioned LibreOffice, not OpenOffice
  LibreOffice: [2]
  5.7 million lines of C++
  0.4 million lines of Java

  Firefox: [3]
  4.0 million lines of C++
  1.8 million lines of C
  1.7 million lines of javascript

  MySql: [4]
  7.0 million lines of C++
  4.0 million lines of C
  0.4 million lines of javascript
  0.3 million lines of Java
The point I'm trying to make is that C++ is widely used, and definitely not used just for gaming.

> Most new development isn't done in C++

Whether or not C++ is the right choice for new development is a different question. Github posted their top 20 languages for new repositories in 2013 [5]. C++ is #6 and has more new projects than C, Objective-C and C#. Even if it's fading in popularity, that's still a lot of new projects in C++.

[1] http://www.ohloh.net/p/openoffice/analyses/latest/languages_...

[2] http://www.ohloh.net/p/libreoffice/analyses/latest/languages...

[3] https://www.ohloh.net/p/firefox/analyses/latest/languages_su...

[4] http://www.ohloh.net/p/mysql/analyses/latest/languages_summa...

[5] http://adambard.com/blog/top-github-languages-for-2013-so-fa...