> In the 1970s, C may have been considered a general-purpose programming langauge. Today, given the landscape of languages currently available, C and C++ have a much more niche role. They are appropriate for the "power users" described above, who need every last bit of performance, at the cost of more development effort.
I really don't think this is true. I've worked in CAD and video games and embedded software, and in all those you're likely using C++ (not to mention a lot of desktop software that can't afford to embed a chromium instance for electron.) For some reason people here just assume that anything that isn't web development or backend server CRUD stuff is a niche.
As much attention as something like Rust or whatnot gets on hacker news, the reality is that if you can't afford garbage collector pauses, and you need performance, you're using C/C++ most of the time.
I really don't think this is true. I've worked in CAD and video games and embedded software, and in all those you're likely using C++ (not to mention a lot of desktop software that can't afford to embed a chromium instance for electron.) For some reason people here just assume that anything that isn't web development or backend server CRUD stuff is a niche.
As much attention as something like Rust or whatnot gets on hacker news, the reality is that if you can't afford garbage collector pauses, and you need performance, you're using C/C++ most of the time.