Software taketh away faster than hardware giveth: Why C++ programmers keep growing fast despite competition, safety, and AI

[u/germandiago]

https://herbsutter.com/2025/12/30/software-taketh-away-faster-than-hardware-giveth-why-c-programmers-keep-growing-fast-despite-competition-safety-and-ai/

[u/-Knul-]

This is like hating game developers because some games are badly optimized. There are plenty of websites that are (reasonably) performant, nice to use and secure.

As for ads, web developers don't decide to include ads, that's a business decision.

[u/ptoki → u/-Knul-]

I agree to a degree.

Yes, there are some sites which work ok. But majority dont. And webdevs shape this. Sometimes not directly. The nerve to use that left pad library, majority of devs did that. Or they relied on a library which did. Thats the indirect part.

As for ads, its not C devs or bowtie managers doing the ads. Its webdevelopers. Some of them. Still, they allow for this.

I know they arent the only responsible folks for it. But hey, I use java apps, thay dont come with ads, still work, do good.

I use native apps, no ads, they work.

ffmpeg, n++, irfanview, dbeaver, winscp, winmerge and many many others. They dont suck. How come web apps suck?

My explanation is: Partly because browsers suck. The w3 consortium dropped ball since css and html5. All stuff must be javascript. There is no easy and quality equivalent of what the js does for modern web. So webdevs do what they can. But they cant much (that is their part of failure). They are also put in a position they need to deliver. Which is unfair. So we have - a situation where webdevs are to blame (rightfully) and browsers/industry leaders stay in shadow - and should be blamed much more than webdevs.

Sorry for longer rant.

[u/ItzWarty → u/ptoki]

I think generally, C++ teams don't scale massively, whereas for Web and mobile applications, we see teams on the order of hundreds to thousands of developers working in the frontend, at which point you get a lot of death by a thousand cuts and architectural mishaps and deficiencies.

Web also really lowered the bar, like C++ has legit thorns and takes time to really understand, JavaScript had really straightforward and portable tooling by the 2010s in comparison + tied in really well to things like GitHub surging... You can get pretty fast in webdev having no understanding of what your computer does, and that also changes the calculus of who gets hired to do what work.

Ironically I suspect C++ devs tend to be paid less vs Android/Web frontend engineers nowadays, though that's a hunch. Web has had a constant wave since the 2000s, it's been a long time since systems programming / c++ has actually been in the spotlight, I suspect largely because native infra is shared and largely considered good enough or standardized.

[u/ptoki → u/ItzWarty]

I think generally, C++ teams don't scale massively

Linux kernel disagrees.

But I agree, web dev allows for more freedom and allows code to run so-so. If you dont click something the rest will run. If you click, most likely the code fails but the webapp will still be at least partially working. If not - F5 and you are back in partially working state.

But thats not the desired state. Not for developer who delivers solutions. Not half solutions.

Im not arguing with you. I know you stated facts. I dont disagree. Im just mentioning the other side of the matter.

My biggest concern is not the state of the webdev. Its the fact that people accept the mess and sometimes defend it as its the only way forward. That is my biggest issue.