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Are C and C++ Losing Ground?
Pickens writes "Dr. Dobbs has an interesting interview with Paul Jansen, the managing director of TIOBE Software, about the Programming Community Index, which measures the popularity of programming languages by monitoring their web presence. Since the TIOBE index has been published now for more than 6 years, it gives an interesting picture about trends in the usage of programming languages. Jansen says not much has affected the top ten programming languages in the last five years, with only Python entering the top 10 (replacing COBOL), but C and C++ are definitely losing ground. 'Languages without automated garbage collection are getting out of fashion,' says Jansen. 'The chance of running into all kinds of memory problems is gradually outweighing the performance penalty you have to pay for garbage collection.'"
We have certainly replaced C/C++ with Python wherever we can. This is about 90% of our software. Except where C is absolutely needed (which is mostly just in our kernel/device driver stuff), the 10x faster Python development and far easier code maintenance just outweighs everything else. That the Python is much less prone to crashing for programs beyond tiny one-offs is another big positive (yes, yes, if you write perfect C/C++ and don't use glib you'll never crash either, but in practice this never happens).
In practice the speed difference doesn't matter for almost every application we've run into - we have a high speed network load tester in Python, which sounds ridiculous, but it works and it makes it insanely easier to add new tests or behaviors. If we ever hit a bottleneck, we just write a small C extension module and call that from the Python.
I'm saying Python here, but insert your higher level language of choice.
I'd _like_ to stop using C++, frankly, but I don't seem to have a choice. A lot of my work depends on real-time capability, the kind of speed that is still only really possible on natively compiled languages that don't do dynamic typing.
I don't even mean hardcore real-time mechanical nano-second control of knife-wielding deathbots, just simple, This Must Run As Fast or Faster Than The Rate At Which It Will Be Converted To Analog. Python and Java still don't replace C in this area. (Mainly audio, video, and high-speed mechanical control.) And when it gets complex and you need to get into object oriented models to simplify the programming, there is unfortunately no real alternative other than C++. Combine this with that fact that there are a bunch of great libraries out there written in C++ that would be very difficult to replace, and you're stuck with it.
(I sort of oscillate between liking C++ and hating it, but I'm preferring straight C more and more these days. But like I said, I don't always have the luxury of choice, depending on what libraries I need to use.)
All these other languages mentioned (Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl, etc) do not compile to native code, and all do dynamic memory management. Hell, that's exactly what makes them *good*. But unfortunately they're not so good for real-time tasks.
For real-time, you need deterministic memory management, and native speed. I've been looking at some other languages that compile to native code these days, like D, or Vala, but I haven't really decided yet whether I can start using them on serious projects.
I'd really like to learn more about functional programming in this area, too, but there seem to be very few functional languages that are designed for real-time. FAUST is one, but it's only for audio.
Anyone know any other good natively-compiled languages that actually have well-implemented modern features?
I wish it were possible to have a compiled version of Python, for example, but there are many dynamic features it depends on. (Some stuff could be done in Pyrex, which is a pretty cool little project, but so far I've only used it to make bindings to C libraries.)