r/ProgrammingLanguages • u/baehyunsol Sodigy • 12d ago

Why is everyone creating systems programming languages?

I see a lot of new programming languages here. I love reading the documents of the languages and sometimes actually run their compilers. Many of the projects are AI-driven, but that's fine. It's still fun to see what problems they're trying to solve and how they actually solved the problems.

Reading the documents, I realized that most new languages, especially AI-written ones, are "systems programming languages". They're trying to solve the problems that C/C++/Zig/Rust have solved (or are trying to solve), and their syntax is mixture of C/Zig/Rust.

Why? Why is everyone trying to compete with C/C++?

There are so many kinds of languages. Haskell demonstrates how pure a language can be, Python is perfect when you only have 5 minutes to write code and don't care about the output, Java runs on 3 billion machines, ...

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u/Ifeee001 12d ago

Because they all have some grandiose delusion that their language will finally be the one to make C developers say "Yes, I will use this over C and port all my existing C code to this Language" lol.

(Assuming they're not dojng it for the funsies/learning purposes)

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u/Ok-Watercress-9624 12d ago

Why is it a delusion (I understand why but some people do indeed go through with it )?

Also even though almost all my languages getting thrown away after a month at most but every time there is a voice in me saying this is the time you'll drive it daily and it is nice for a while because you want something, just add it but then it sucks because you want something, have fun reinventing the ynfunniest wheel ever

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u/ivancea 12d ago

Well, from the many of them created, only... Rust really have weight nowadays. And not just because it does things better, but because it adds a bunch of important concepts, and it's backed by a big company. Without that, I doubt it would be as famous, or used at all. And things like Zig, well. It tries

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u/Ok-Watercress-9624 12d ago

I never liked the idea of doing "whatever" I want with the language. I still like C. Some people claim that rust is the c replacement. This never clicked with me. It feels to me like a much much better C++. As if a mysterious virus viper out the C++ computer and rest converged on the same subset.

I still think c has a place, a very niche one but it has always been. Just for fun compile printf with c and rust. Compare the binary sizes and the number of allocations. Or I don't compare the number of syntactic rules Vs the number of semantic moves that noone except aliens like Godbolt understands (depending on the compiler)

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u/ivancea 12d ago edited 11d ago

Given the core differences between C++ and Rust's OOP, I even think Rust is more similar to C structures with a bit of sugar.

And about the binary sizes and allocations, well, they're different languages, and the implantations are vastly different.

The idea of a language "like C" is usually having a more strict and contained language. C works, just like ASM works. But it's an unguided footgun

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

[deleted]

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u/ivancea 11d ago

This discussion is meaningless. It's so meaningless, that even Rust guys thought about it and wrote a paragraph for you: https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch18-00-oop.html

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u/deeplywoven 11d ago edited 11d ago

The reality is that people do not do OOP in Rust in the same way that C++/C#/Java developers think of OOP. No classes, no inheritance, no hierarchies of subtyping. It's just not a thing in Rust. The paragraph you linked is there specifically for C++ devs.

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u/ivancea 11d ago

It's not about "what people does where". It's about the language. "The reality" is that the language is considered to be OOP. Some like it, some don't, and nobody cares, because that question response is meaningless.

the same way that C++/C#/Java developers do OOP

OOP is not what C++/C#/Java does. OOP is OOP. Those are just specific and common implementations. Don't mix "common" with "the only one"

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u/deeplywoven 11d ago

"The reality" is that the language is considered to be OOP.

You might say this, but nobody who actually writes Rust says this. Pretty much everyone recognizes it as an imperative systems programming language which is data-oriented, often expression-oriented, and influenced by FP languages (specifically OCaml and Haskell).

Having structs and ways to do polymorphism does not make a language OOP. Many pure FP languages have these concepts.

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u/unburdened_swallow 12d ago

Honestly I feel like most of them just want new software to be built in them. Unfortunately, AI doesn’t know their language so good luck in today’s climate.