Beyond C++: The promise of Rust, Carbon, and Cppfront
An Anonymous Coward writes:
In some ways, C and C++ run the world. You'd never know it from all the hype about other programming languages, such as Python and Go, but the vast majority of high-performance mass-market desktop applications and operating systems are written in C++, and the vast majority of embedded applications are written in C. We're not talking about smartphone apps or web applications: these have special languages, such as Java and Kotlin for Android and Objective-C and Swift for iOS. They only use C/C++ for inner loops that have a crying need for speed, and for libraries shared across operating systems.
C and C++ have dominated systems programming for so long, it's difficult to imagine them being displaced. Yet many experts are saying it is time for them to go, and for programmers to embrace better alternatives. Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich recently made waves when he suggested that C and C++ developers should move to Rust instead. "The industry should declare those languages as deprecated," Russinovich tweeted.
Many developers are exploring Rust as a production-ready alternative to C/C++, and there are other options on the horizon. In this article, we'll consider the merits and readiness of the three most cited C/C++ language alternatives: Rust, Carbon, and cppfront. First, let's take a look back through the history and some of the pain points of C/C++.
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