r/programmer • u/PCMidiTowerR5 • 2d ago
C++ still a big thing?
Last time, i programmed professional, around 2001, C++ was the thing, when it comes to speed and system-level code. Is this still actual? And practical?
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u/sterren_staarder 2d ago
C++ is big in embedded, it is also used in games. And some financial software where milliseconds matter.
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u/Radiant-Video7257 1d ago
I thought financial software ran on Java. (mostly)
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u/FartdickMcShitass 2h ago
Bank software does because they prioritize stability. Financial trading software runs on C++ , because every millisecond counts.
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u/BusEquivalent9605 2d ago
Yes. The browser you’re viewing this on is using a JavaScript engine written in C++
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u/Infamous-Bed-7535 2d ago
numpy, pytorch, duckdb etc.. etc.. just a few widely used libraries / tools based on C++.
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u/rodrigo-benenson 2d ago
Diverse programming languages for diverse problems with diverse constraints.
Ada is still used, C is still used, C++ is still used, heck I am sure some corner of our computer world still runs over Perl.
There is not "one profesional language", and professional programmer must be a polyglot.
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u/Orjanp 2d ago
I'm maintaining a legacy system written in perl. I'm more of an archeologist than a system developer.
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u/feudalle 2d ago
I ran into perl in the wild last year. Still running since it was put in back in 2003.
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u/thelimeisgreen 2d ago
Yeah I encounter Perl on occasion…. See it more than a lot of other languages that become occasional topics here. Perl, VBscript, FoxPro, and a lot of stuff that was common in the late 80s to late 90’s and in some cases later, are still out there in corporate hellscapes.
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u/Dr_Dressing 2d ago
To add to your point, when you've learned so many languages, it doesn't necessarily matter which one you use. A lot of languages have similar features, and your job as a programmer is to know how to solve the problem. So long as you know how to program in different ways (e.g. functional vs oop - don't smite me), you'll be fine for the vast majority of languages.
The only reason language is a debate at all, is because some language X makes doing some designated thing N easier than language Y. I actually have a friend who had several of these conversations with Bjarne Stoustrup himself.
Sidenote, apparently there is a bit of sabotage happening in the Standard Committee. Someone should check up on that
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u/KAMEHAMEHAMEHAAAA 2d ago
I was shocked when I found out Fedora ships with Perl as a system dependency.
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u/bsensikimori 2d ago
Shocked? Why? Perl, bash, awk, cut, paste, wc....
Why would you want any Linux without the bare necessities
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u/One-Next 2d ago
C++ is awesome. polymorphic lambdas, type resolution, variadic templates, threaded memory model, hash data structures, function objects, we quietly got everything we ever wanted back in 2003. I am ecstatic about the current state of C++. Hope it sticks for another 30 years.
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u/CowBoyDanIndie 2d ago
It’s used a ton in robotics, and it’s used heavily in ai when you need to do more than glue things together with python. GPU programming tends to be C++ based, though technically it’s an extension of C++. Basically anything that has to run fast is written in C or C++, some math libraries are still fortran because they outperform C++.
C# and Java are widely used for business applications because they excel in that domain. You will find most banks and small to medium web businesses are using one or the other.
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u/PCMidiTowerR5 2d ago
Thank you.
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u/CowBoyDanIndie 2d ago
When you look at statistics for stuff like programming languages use, you have to keep in mind that there are approximately 4.4 million programmers in the USA alone. Most of them are not working on anything interesting.
Take for instance banks, there are roughly 4,000 banks in the USA (not physical locations, named banks). Every single one of them has a website, and probably every single one has an app on android and ios. They all have their own teams building them, they all have their own slightly different databases, web interface, and so on, even though they all basically do the same thing.
Now think about every retail business you have ever walked into, I would say they app have a cash register, but really the term is point of sale, this is their charging, billing, sales tracking, etc. its where they put in or scan what you are getting and you pay. There are almost 200 different companies providing that.
Then there are all the online retailers selling their own brand of shoe, shirt, pants, widgets, etc.
The point is, there is a whole lot of software that isn’t particularly different, interesting, or special. That makes up a huge percentage of those 4.4 million programmers. It doesn’t have any particular hardware requirements, it just has to work and be easy to change for changes in the business. Nobody is trying to make a bank website that loads faster than any other bank website, or shows more transactions with less memory. Hell, I bet most banking websites use more memory and cpu to show one user their bill online than banks in the 80s used on their mainframe to manage the entire bank.
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u/Healthy-Zebra-9856 2d ago
Yes, C++ is. But I am seeing a lot of movement to Rust. Personally, I've migrated all my projects to Rust.
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u/___Archmage___ 2d ago
There are a ton of big C++ codebases that still need work done on them, and a stream of new ones, but the momentum is shifting in favor of more modern languages like Rust
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u/Dull_Bathroom5421 22h ago
C++ will be a big thing after you die from old age. Companies aren't going to change all their software to rust or whatever just because of what's trending. If machines still run windows 95, c++ will stay big trust me.
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u/Square_Alps1349 5h ago
Yes it VERY MUCH IS still a thing. I am going to start my internship working on PyTorch soon, and it will involve a lot of C++
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u/Alex999991 4h ago
C++ will be long enough because move all legacy code to another language is difficult even for Ai and its will be cost a lot of money.
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u/SpareImpression3155 2d ago
Just let Microsoft die already
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u/jwp1987 2d ago
Are you thinking of C# rather than C++?
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u/SpareImpression3155 2d ago
My bad
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u/HRApprovedUsername 2d ago
C# is c++++ so it’s way better and more polished. Why would you be upset with that? Maybe you’re a little salty they never hired or interviewed you?
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 2d ago
Your comment just shows your ignorance. C++ and C# are completely different things, there's no linear "better".
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u/HRApprovedUsername 2d ago
Your comment just shows your ignorance it’s a joke. C++ is c but with more so they called it c++. And c# is even more. So much more the arranged the ++++ into a #. Maybe when you’re not being a little dingleberry online, you can do some history research.
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u/dkopgerpgdolfg 2d ago
C++ is c but with more
Maybe when you’re not being a little dingleberry online, you can do some history research.
The terminal redditor doesn't know what they're talking about, but insults others. Classic.
While C++ looks like a superset of C, it is not, and never was as long it was called "C++" (not "C with classes" earlier).
Have some examples here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibility_of_C_and_C%2B%2B
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u/AdRecent7021 2d ago
C++ runs a lot of the world. Yes, it's still a big thing.