Comment by pjmlp 3 months ago
Programming languages are products, that is like saying you want to keep using vi 1.0.
Maybe C should have stop at K&R C from UNIX V6, at least that would have spared the world in having it being adopted outside UNIX.
C++ was invented exactly because Bjarne Stroustoup vouched never again to repeat the downgrade of his development experience from Simula to BCPL.
When faced with writing a distributed systems application at Bell Labs, and having to deal with C, the very first step was to create C with Classes.
Also had C++ not been invented, or C gone into an history footnote, so what, there would be other programming languages to chose from.
Lets not put programming languages into some kind of worshiping sanctuary.
Most likely C++ would not happened, while at the same time C and UNIX adoption would never gotten big enough to be relevant outside Bell Labs.
Which then again, isn't that much of a deal, industry would have steered into other programming languages and operating systems.
Overall that would be a much preferable alternative timeline, assuming security would be taken more seriously, as it has taken 45 years since C.A.R Hoare Turing award speech and Morris worm, and only after companies and government started to feel the monetary pain of their decisions.
I liked the idea I heard: internet audiences demand progress, but internet audiences hate change.