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Re: “Is C++ Dead?”

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On 12/03/2026 19:46, Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester wrote:
> Lynn McGuire <LynnMcGuire5@GMail.com> wrote:
> |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
> |"“Is C++ Dead?”                                                          |
> |   https://deepengineering.substack.com/p/is-c-dead                      |
> |                                                                         |
> |“[. . .]                                                                 |
> |[ . .] C++ is the main                                                   |
> |programming language used in many critical systems, including hospitals, |
> |cars, and airplanes. [. . .]                                             |
> |[. . .]                                                                  |
> |[. ..]”"                                                                 |
> |-------------------------------------------------------------------------|
> 
> Oh dear!
> (S. HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/ fuer Kontaktdaten!)


Yes it's terrifying.

There are industry standard restrictions in place, organisation
restrictions, project restrictions, and requirements from customers
often list specific segments of code that must be used as a consequence
of previous failures where a fix was decided was thereafter a must (I
suppose that's just for liability's sake, it takes more than mere usage
of a code segment to confer safety consequences on a project's outputs).

Processes use lots of tools, testing and review methods, it's not just
coding and job-done. There are literally dozens of studious, expensive
steps and that's just in automotive, the lowliest of the fields
quoted-in above. Training and other knowledge-management and
habit-forming techniques are applicable throughout.

It's still hair-raising despite that. I worked in automotive software
engineering for a time and it gave me fewer hairs to raise and I didn't
stay long enough to get combed into an automotive software engineer -
just long enough to recognise the incredible breadth and depth of
problems, expertise, focus, risk-management, steadfastness, pushback,
pace, etc... If you meet an engineer in those fields do not be surprised
that they earn more than you.

Safe software engineering is almost nothing to do with C++; I suspect
C++ is used for reasons of historical evolution of assurance combined
with matters of the employment market rather than any other reasons. I
feel very few people understand anything of what makes safety-critical
software engineering safe and it has almost nothing to do with the
language chosen for the encoding of machine instructions because
ultimately it's a process of translation of /requirements/ to machine
instructions. In fact it's a process of translation of goals and market
gambles into requirements even before that.

AI in those fields has unique challenges other than mere high-level
system control-logic encoding which C++ /does/ /NOT/ lend itself to, I
doubt Ada does either. Test discipline is very important there and I
would expect if I went back by now I'd find no low-level coding tools
used for AI project engineering processes (only for the tools used).



-- 
Tristan Wibberley

The message body is Copyright (C) 2026 Tristan Wibberley except
citations and quotations noted. All Rights Reserved except that you may,
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will only be used for evaluation of the AI methods it implements.

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Re: “Is C++ Dead?” Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester <thanks-to@Taf.com> - 2026-03-12 19:46 +0000
  Re: “Is C++ Dead?” Tristan Wibberley <tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk> - 2026-03-14 23:35 +0000
    Re: “Is C++ Dead?” Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester <thanks-to@Taf.com> - 2026-03-15 13:35 +0000
      Re: “Is C++ Dead?” Tristan Wibberley <tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk> - 2026-03-15 15:37 +0000
        Re: “Is C++ Dead?” Nioclás Pól Caileán de Ghloucester <thanks-to@Taf.com> - 2026-03-15 17:58 +0000
        Re: “Is C++ Dead?” Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-03-15 22:23 +0000
          Re: “Is C++ Dead?” Tristan Wibberley <tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk> - 2026-03-16 15:34 +0000
            Re: Re: “Is C++ Dead?” scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-03-16 15:58 +0000
              Re: “Is C++ Dead?” Tristan Wibberley <tristan.wibberley+netnews2@alumni.manchester.ac.uk> - 2026-03-17 00:02 +0000

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