> C will continue to be used because it always has been and always will be available everywhere

Yes, you can use it everywhere. Is that what you consider a success?

I'm curious as to which other metric you'd use to define successful? If it actual usage, C still wins. Number of new lines pushed into production each year, or new project started, C is still high up the list, would be my guess.

Languages like Rust a probably more successful in terms of age vs. adoption speed. There's just a good number of platforms which aren't even supported, and where you have no other choice than C. Rust can't target most platforms, and it compiles on even less. Unless Linux want's to drop support for a good number of platforms, Rust adoption can only go so far.

> I'm curious as to which other metric you'd use to define successful? If it actual usage, C still wins.

Wait, wait, you can use C everywhere, and absolute lines of code is the metric people seem to move away from C as quickly as possible to higher level languages that perhaps aren't as portable (Python, Java, C#).

> Rust can't target most platforms, and it compiles on even less. Unless Linux want's to drop support for a good number of platforms, Rust adoption can only go so far.

Re: embedded, this is just terribly short sighted. Right now, yes, C obviously has the broadest possible support.

The issue is that C has no adoption curve. It only has ground to lose. Meanwhile Rust is, relatively, a delight to use, and offers important benefits. As I said elsewhere: "Unless I am wrong, there is still lots of COBOL we wish wasn't COBOL? And that reality doesn't sound like a celebration of COBOL?" The future looks bright for Rust, if you believe as I do, we will begin to demand much more from our embedded parts.

Now, will Rust ever dominate? Will it be used absolutely everywhere? Perhaps not. Does that matter? Not AFAIAC. Winning by my lights is -- using this nice thing rather than this not so nice thing. It's doing interesting things where one couldn't previously. It's a few more delighted developers.

I'd much rather people were delighted/excited about a tech/a language/a business/a vibrant community, than, whatever it is, simply persisted. Because "simply persisted", like your comment above, is only a measure of where we are right now.

One way to think of this is -- Perl is also everywhere. Shipped with every Linux distro and MacOS, probably to be found somewhere deep inside Windows too. Now, is Perl, right now, a healthy community or does it simply persist? Is its persistence a source of happiness or dread?

Why do you think people are delighted/excited about Rust? Some people are, but I’m sure plenty of people are about C and Perl is well. Some people isn’t most people and certainly not all people.

> Some people isn’t most people and certainly not all people.

What are you trying to say? I never said Rust was the universal language, that is pleasing to all people.

I was very careful to frame Rust's success in existential, not absolute or universal, terms:

>> Winning by my lights is -- using this nice thing rather than this not so nice thing. It's doing interesting things where one couldn't previously. It's a few more delighted developers.

I am not saying these technologies (C and Perl) should go away. I am saying -- I am very pleased there is no longer a monoculture. For me, winning is having alternatives to C in embedded and kernel development, and Perl for scripting, especially as these communities, right now, seem less vibrant, and less adaptable to change.

... yes?

>> Yes, you can use it everywhere. Is that what you consider a success?

> ... yes?

Then perhaps you and I define success differently? As I've said in other comments above, C persisting or really standing still is not what I would think of as a winning and vibrant community. And the moving embedded and kernel development from what was previously a monoculture to something more diverse could be a big win for developers. My hope is that competition from Rust makes using C better/easier/more productive, but I have my doubts as to whether it will move C to make changes.

Sometimes it's nice to know that something will run and compile reliably far into the future. That's a nice thing to have, and wide support for the language and its relatively unchanging nature make it reliable.

> Sometimes it's nice to know that something will run and compile reliably far into the future.

I'm not sure why you think this is a problem that Rust has? Perhaps you mean something different but the Rust project compiles available code on crate.io upon the release of a new version.[0] C compilers may imagine their new compiler code doesn't break old software, but Rust takes that extra step, so we know it won't.

[0]: https://github.com/rust-lang/crater

Yes, that is success. A pretty large degree of success.

> it always has been and always will be available everywhere

"Always has been" is pushing it. Half of C's history is written with outdated, proprietary compilers that died alongside their architecture. It's easy to take modern tech like LLVM for granted.

This might actually be a solved problem soonish, LLMs are unreasonably effective at writing compilers and C is designed to be easy to write a compiler for, which also helps. I don’t know if anyone tried, but there’s been related work posted here on HN recently: a revived Java compiler and the N64 decompilation project. Mashed together you can almost expect to be able to generate C compilers for obscure architectures on demand given just some docs and binary firmware dumps.

Which is neat! But if you care about performance, you're probably using Clang to compile for your esoteric architecture. And if your esoarch already supports LLVM... might as well write Rust instead.

Unreasonably good at writing compilers? Not in my experience lol.