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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++.
C++ pain points
C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Laboratories starting in 1979. Since C++ is an attempt to add object-oriented features (plus other improvements) to C, Stroustrup initially called it “C with Objects." Stroustrup renamed the language to C++ in 1983, and the language was made available outside Bell Laboratories in 1985. The first commercial C++ compiler, Cfront, was released at that time. Cfront translated C++ to C, which could then be compiled and linked. Later C++ compilers produced object code files to feed directly into a linker.
Since then, the C++ standardization effort has been continuous, starting with the publication of Stroustrup’s 1985 The C++ Programming Language and 1990's ARM—The Annotated C++ Reference Manual. These were followed by a whole series of ANSI/ISO C++ standards, in 1998, 2003, 2011, 2014, 2017, 2020, with the next one planned for 2023. There are also intermediate technical...