lpetrich
Contributor
Several programming languages have successors that build on them, successors that eliminate or get around awkward features of them:
What might succeed C++? Here are several recently-devised C and C++ alternatives:
GitHub - carbon-language/carbon-lang: Carbon Language's main repository: documents, design, implementation, and related tools. (NOTE: Carbon Language is experimental; see README)
Google’s New Programming Language is Called Carbon | by Aniket | Geek Culture | Jul, 2022 | Medium
What Is Carbon Programming Language By Google? | Level Up Coding
noting this introduction to Carbon:
Carbon Language: An experimental successor to C++ - Chandler Carruth - CppNorth 2022 - YouTube
CC mentioned some difficulties:
Also with the governance of C++ -- a big cumbersome standards body.
Shadow cast over future of Google's C++ replacement
A new programming language that might be successor to C++
Language | Successor |
---|---|
C | C++ |
Java | Kotlin |
JavaScript | TypeScript |
Objective-C | Swift |
C++ | ? |
- Home - D Programming Language
- The V Programming Language
- The Go Programming Language
- Home Zig Programming Language
- Nim Programming Language
- The Beef Programming Language
- JaiPrimer/JaiPrimer.md at master · BSVino/JaiPrimer · GitHub
- Rust Programming Language
GitHub - carbon-language/carbon-lang: Carbon Language's main repository: documents, design, implementation, and related tools. (NOTE: Carbon Language is experimental; see README)
Google's engineers have created other programming languages, like Dart and Go.Project status
Carbon Language is currently an experimental project. There is no working compiler or toolchain. You can see the demo interpreter for Carbon on compiler-explorer.com.
We want to better understand whether we can build a language that meets our successor language criteria, and whether the resulting language can gather a critical mass of interest within the larger C++ industry and community.
Google’s New Programming Language is Called Carbon | by Aniket | Geek Culture | Jul, 2022 | Medium
What Is Carbon Programming Language By Google? | Level Up Coding
noting this introduction to Carbon:
Carbon Language: An experimental successor to C++ - Chandler Carruth - CppNorth 2022 - YouTube
CC mentioned some difficulties:
- Technical debt. Necessary choices that made C++ great are becoming a burden. C++ accumulated decades of technical debt.
- Prioritization of backward compatibility. More and more features have been added, rather than removed or replaced. While backward compatibility is important, it comes at a cost. It adds and prevents fixing the technical debt.
Also with the governance of C++ -- a big cumbersome standards body.
Shadow cast over future of Google's C++ replacement
n the past, languages such as D and Objective-C have made some improvements over C++ -- but the huge C++ code base makes it a challenge to replace, Cornwall said. Rust is not an ideal C++ replacement because it is not source-code compatible with C++ and doesn't have classes -- a defining idea in object-oriented programming -- but it does support modern features such as more secure memory allocations that make it safer than C++, he said.
A new programming language that might be successor to C++
Before Carruth introduced us to Carbon, another programming language called Rust was seen as the successor to C++. This was primarily because of its syntactic similarities to C++, as it provides increased speed and better memory safety. However, this is open to discussion since many developers found Rust too difficult to learn as it introduced a lot of novel concepts too.
Besides the steep learning curve, converting major projects’ current C++ codebases to Rust is challenging. Further, according to the developers of Carbon, the design of Rust itself acts as a significant barrier to adoption and migration from C++. On the other hand, Carbon aims to convert the C++ codebases in a much better way than Rust.
For a C++ developer, it won’t be difficult to learn Carbon. In fact, Carbon is said to have a gentle learning curve. While many felt using Rust was similar to learning a new programming language.