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In other news: screwdrivers still everywhere.

Anyone waiting for the death of C is delusional. It’s the best (often the only) tool for many jobs and will always underpin most of the world’s operating systems and low levels of user space. A few counter examples don’t invalidate this point.



Major C projects that took 20+ years to develop won't be all replaced in a couple of years, but that doesn't mean the replacement hasn't started. C was the best/only option for almost a half of a century, so it has built a lot of momentum and legacy, but the niches where it's the best/only tool continue to shrink.

C is unusual that it doesn't have a single 1:1 replacement, and few C projects are being directly rewritten in something else. Instead, C is getting sidelined, and not growing into new areas where the software is moving. Many other languages are now an obvious choice for things that used to be C's domain. I remember in the early 90s desktop apps were primarily in C (assembly and Pascal second), but nowadays apps can be written in a variety of languages, including scripting ones, or even entirely displaced by webapps. For early web services, if Perl was too slow, C was the second choice. Now C has been pushed to lower-level plumbing, and even that started being eroded by golang and Rust. Even games that used to be strictly C/C++ territory have moved to C++ engine + scripting (with the proportion of scripting growing). Unity games use C# (e.g. I was shocked that BeatSaber, a low-latency VR game, is in C#).

I've been similarly waiting for the demise of x86. x86 used to be the best/only option for a very long time, and is still having a momentum in desktops, but a whole new, larger mobile computing world has sprung without it.


Perhaps this is better stated as "Standard/slot screws/drivers are everywhere." There are places where newer interfaces are more appropriate.


I really hate to be right here, but Rust is picking up traction and has passionately growing fan base…..




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