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·
    2 hours ago

    My point is that there’s still gonna be some somewhere. You’re just trying to handwave it away because somebody else wrote it.

    • arthropod_shift@programming.dev
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Not necessarily. Let’s say that…

      • The stack pointer is defined in the vector table to point somewhere into RAM.
      • The reset vector points to some function _entry(), with a linker script to take care of its memory placement.
      • All other interrupt handlers are arbitrary C functions.

      You can compile only your C source file that defines _entry() and interrupt vectors, then flash the resulting firmware. No assembly involved, no external linkage, and no stdlib required.

      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 hours ago

        Yes, and this is ignoring interrupts, access privileges, thread stacks … what’s the C equivalent of the MSR and MRS instructions?

        • arthropod_shift@programming.dev
          1·
          2 hours ago

          Again, those aren’t universally required. You can make an embedded device that reads the ambient light levels and turns on an LED when it’s dark without thread stacks, privileges, or interrupts. Don’t make your system more complicated than it needs to be.

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 hour 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
              1·
              1 hour 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.