> So here we find ourselves in a world with various better choices than C and C++, yet they still get used for a pretty significant chunk of all the coding that goes on in the world. Why is this?
Isn't the emergence of relatively many system programming languages in recent years partly a reaction to there indeed not being many viable choices? I mean, I guess you have all the languages that are C-level (or Go-level) that were simply out-competed by C in the mainstream software world for whatever reasons, but people don't seem willing to go and program in languages like Ada and seeing if it's a better fit (or at least I haven't heard much of it). It seems more like, "every other decently mainstream language has mandatory garbage collection → therefore C/C++".
Isn't the emergence of relatively many system programming languages in recent years partly a reaction to there indeed not being many viable choices? I mean, I guess you have all the languages that are C-level (or Go-level) that were simply out-competed by C in the mainstream software world for whatever reasons, but people don't seem willing to go and program in languages like Ada and seeing if it's a better fit (or at least I haven't heard much of it). It seems more like, "every other decently mainstream language has mandatory garbage collection → therefore C/C++".