Post:

If you’re still shipping load‑bearing code in C, C++, Python, or vanilla JavaScript in 2025, you’re gambling with house money and calling it “experience.”

As systems scale, untyped or foot‑gun‑heavy languages don’t just get harder to work with—they hit a complexity cliff. Every new feature is another chance for a runtime type error or a memory bug to land in prod. Now layer LLM‑generated glue code on top of that. More code, more surface area, less anyone truly understands. In that world, “we’ll catch it in tests” is wishful thinking, not a strategy.

We don’t live in 1998 anymore. We have languages that:

  • Make whole classes of bugs unrepresentable (Rust, TypeScript)
  • Give you memory safety and concurrency sanity by default (Rust, Go)
  • Provide static structure that both humans and LLMs can lean on as guardrails, not red tape

At this point, choosing C/C++ for safety‑critical paths, or dynamic languages for the core of a large system, isn’t just “old school.” It’s negligence with better marketing.

Use Rust, Go, or TypeScript for anything that actually matters. Use Python/JS at the edges, for scripts and prototypes.

For production, load‑bearing paths in 2025 and beyond, anything else is you saying, out loud:

“I’m okay with avoidable runtime failures and undefined behavior in my critical systems.”

Are you?

Comment:

Nonsense. If your code has reached the point of unmaintainable complexity, then blame the author, not the language.

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
    1·
    5 hours ago

    Turning on an LED when it’s dark doesn’t require a microcontroller, let alone a Cortex-M. You can accomplish that with analog electronics.

    Anyway, you’re moving the goalposts all over the place. What happened to the RTOS kernel from earlier?

    • arthropod_shift@programming.dev
      11·
      4 hours ago

      Not moving the goalposts at all, you’re just missing the forest for the trees. The main point is that there are plenty of use cases that can use pure C with no assembly. I went with a simple example because I thought you’d have an issue with more complex examples like sending a notification over SMS via modem or providing a serial interface for sensor data.

      I don’t feel like arguing for the sake of arguing, though, and I feel like we’re in a pedantry spiral, so I’ll leave the conversation at that. Hope you enjoy your day.