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points by NSUserDefaults 4 days ago | 0 comments
Because you think there is no such language, or even one that gets closer than C++? Look I still kind of like C++… for games. I would never put it in a fighter jet for gods sake.
[–] fps-hero 4 days ago
I don’t want to be inflammatory, so let’s stick to facts. The F35 is the manifestation of a test aircraft designed in the 90s. Of that era, software was predominantly single threaded, hardware definitely so. They also weren’t using the latest and greatest of hardware at the time, they opted for proven flight platforms with hardware dating back well back into the decade. So, very lacklustre performance, tight memory constraints.

The only other legitimate choice for writing software at the time would have been ADA, which for some reason never took off despite being purpose build for the application. Of that time, C++ was the new hotness, it was popular, it was solving architectural problems, and it was performant, unlike say Java.

It’s fairly naive to say “I’d never use C++”. The C++ programmers of the time would have looked at Fortran or COBOL with the same level of disdain. We are lucky to live in a time of better options, and the impending post code future.

[–] tialaramex 4 days ago
> The only other legitimate choice for writing software at the time would have been ADA

Ada makes a lot more sense for this work than C++ did twenty years ago.

[–] bluGill 4 days ago
Ada didn't make sense either: nobody wanted to learn it.
[–] pjmlp 4 days ago
Yes we did, the major impediment was the price of available compilers, their dependency on UNIX workstations, where the Ada compiler was extra, on top of C and C++ that were already there.

Until Ada Core offered GNAT to the community, there were no affordable compilers.

Yet, there is still enough business to keep 6 compiler vendors selling them.

[–] SolarNet 4 days ago
There were schools of computer science, accredited universities, that taught it heavily (one of the 3 lab intro to programming languages next to c++ and python, and allowed to be used through the entire program at mine). A 1/3 of graduates of some of these places got jobs in it, because they were reliable and well paying jobs.

And then the industry swapped to C++. This was not a DoD mandate, this was companies like boeing trying to pay their engineers 1/3 to 1/2 less by paying for C++ devs (starting salary for ada devs was 90-140k, starting salary for c++ devs was 60-180k according to exit statistics). They of course eventually learned that good C++ devs are actually more expensive than their old Ada ones. Not that they bothered to hire good c++ devs.

[–] Maxatar 3 days ago
No it wasn't that nobody wanted to learn it, it's that back then Ada developers cost a lot more than C++ developers and businesses didn't want to pay them.
[–] NSUserDefaults 4 days ago
“Let’s use the new hotness for this new fighter plane” maybe puts things into perspective for me.

In today's terms, that's like vibecoding a Mars mission vehicle just because it's "cool".

[–] drysine 4 days ago
>it [C++] was solving architectural problems

What do you mean?

[–] fps-hero 2 days ago
Think about the difference in how you would structure a program if it was coded in C++/Java vs C. C++ was an enabler of object oriented programming.
[–] drysine 1 day ago
About the same, I think)
[–] fps-hero 4 hours ago
I think what is obvious now wasn’t obvious then. If you think about how Linux and the open source community rallied around C, this was at complete odds to what was being taught at a university level. It’s a miracle C survived (if I only through new C++ programmers thoroughly rejecting its promise and sticking to “safe C++”). Even still, rust is a solution to memory lifetime problems with a modern toolset, it’s not solving ergonomic problems which is how you attract new developers. Similarly, ADA was a better language, probably pascal too, they didn’t win.