I am not arguing that there is a lot of C++ code and that this code will be around for a long time. But I would prefer to see C++ as a language with a future and not as the language some well-paid dinosaurs use to keep the legacy code-base running while all the cool stuff happens elsewhere. "C++ will make a great legacy language" is underselling it.
But we might be wrong: Some government or consumer org or something _could_ step in and start to require the use of memory safe languages or just discourage the use of C/C++ in anything they buy. That would hasten the replacement of C++. I am afraid this is getting more likely based on how the C++ community handles growing concerns about memory safety outside of the development communities.
I have seen presentation on safety by people I respect for their contributions to the C++ language that all said a combination of these things:
* you said "C/C++", so you must be clueless
* you do not know what safety means, let us explain that to you
* everybody else does it wrong and is not really secure either
* we can not solve the problem, because everybody uses C++ for the tricky bits that other language can not do because they are oh so safe
* other languages are not as safe as they claim as they can all call into C++
* it will act swiftly, it will probably only take us a decade or so
* you can use some extra tools somehow, that somebody will probably write
* asking devs to follow our recommendations has never worked before, so we need something to enforce things. Let's ask all devs to please use this new thing.
* Devs unfortunately do not follow best practices and there is nothing we can do about that
That does not seem to be a very convincing communication strategy to me, even less so when other communities show that real improvements are possible.
But we might be wrong: Some government or consumer org or something _could_ step in and start to require the use of memory safe languages or just discourage the use of C/C++ in anything they buy. That would hasten the replacement of C++. I am afraid this is getting more likely based on how the C++ community handles growing concerns about memory safety outside of the development communities.
I have seen presentation on safety by people I respect for their contributions to the C++ language that all said a combination of these things:
* you said "C/C++", so you must be clueless * you do not know what safety means, let us explain that to you * everybody else does it wrong and is not really secure either * we can not solve the problem, because everybody uses C++ for the tricky bits that other language can not do because they are oh so safe * other languages are not as safe as they claim as they can all call into C++ * it will act swiftly, it will probably only take us a decade or so * you can use some extra tools somehow, that somebody will probably write * asking devs to follow our recommendations has never worked before, so we need something to enforce things. Let's ask all devs to please use this new thing. * Devs unfortunately do not follow best practices and there is nothing we can do about that
That does not seem to be a very convincing communication strategy to me, even less so when other communities show that real improvements are possible.