>I keep telling everybody to learn C and C++ irrespective of whatever else they might be forced to study/use since these literally gives them the ability to work at any level in the Software Stack
I would have agreed with you for many years, but I feel that we might be at an inflection point right now.
For many years, all new languages that got any traction at all were higher level, a bit (or a lot) slower, much more memory hungry than C and C++ and came with a huge runtime of their own.
These languages have largely replaced C++ for application development, but they are clearly less suitable for lower level tasks such as writing operating systems, drivers, ML frameworks, game engines, browsers, graphics libraries, embedded systems and libraries that are supposed to be usable across language runtimes.
But now there's Rust, which fixes a number of C++ weaknesses, comes with more modern infrastructure (such as cargo), and appears to have significant support within some of the largest corporations.
It's still very much an open question how this is going to end, but for the first time in my life as a professional developer (starting in the early 1990s), I wouldn't be surprised if C++ was in very gradual but terminal decline.
C++ hasn't stand still, if you are in Microsoft ecosystem, vcpkg and NuGET take care of cargo, others can make use of cmake and conan.
Then as much I love borrow checker and being safe by default, there are a couple of C++ domains where Rust isn't even a though in 99.9% of the eco-system.
Just consider that Apple has decided to create a C dialect (basically turning all the knobs to be safe by default) instead of Rust for their iBoot firmware.
>I wouldn't be surprised if C++ was in very gradual but terminal decline.
I am quite sceptical that this will ever happen. C and C++ are fated to live together and forever :-)
The "accidental" rise of Web Applications gave a fillip to other languages simply because most of the early programmers were non-CS people. But once these apps hit their limits at scale they had no other option but to fallback to C++. So most often you only have a shim/skeleton app written in some other language whereas the libraries/guts are all written in C++.
Despite the hype around certain newish languages, and their promoters' desperation to denigrate what they see as the competition, C++ usage is still growing very, very fast. In any given week, more people pick up C++ for the first time than have ever heard of the new ones.
Up until the pandemic hit, for several years running, more people attended each ISO C++ Standard meeting (in places as far-flung as Hawaii and Prague) than any previous meeting. Attendance at C++ conferences, and at the same time the total number of C++ conferences, including for smaller and smaller regions, has shot up year after year.
So any perception that C++ use is in decline, or even not exploding, is wholly a product of propaganda. C++ people code while others hype.
But that‘s not even what I‘m talking about as it merely reflects the fact that C++ has been replaced by higher level languages for development of regular business applications.
What I‘m saying is that now for the first time there is actual momentum behind a language that is a suitable replacement for C++ in its remaining core domains.
And that momentum is driven by serious computer science concerns within large companies rather than by the usual suspects when it comes to hype cycles.
I‘m not predicting C++‘s decline. I‘m merely saying that it would no longer surprise me as there is now both the substance and the momentum to drive such a development.
I would have agreed with you for many years, but I feel that we might be at an inflection point right now.
For many years, all new languages that got any traction at all were higher level, a bit (or a lot) slower, much more memory hungry than C and C++ and came with a huge runtime of their own.
These languages have largely replaced C++ for application development, but they are clearly less suitable for lower level tasks such as writing operating systems, drivers, ML frameworks, game engines, browsers, graphics libraries, embedded systems and libraries that are supposed to be usable across language runtimes.
But now there's Rust, which fixes a number of C++ weaknesses, comes with more modern infrastructure (such as cargo), and appears to have significant support within some of the largest corporations.
It's still very much an open question how this is going to end, but for the first time in my life as a professional developer (starting in the early 1990s), I wouldn't be surprised if C++ was in very gradual but terminal decline.