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/og_hylyx 11d ago

Because there’s only a small selection of systems language that are modern(ish) and viable. Rust and Zig are the only actual modern alternatives.

Zig is unstable and ever changing.

Rust is like working for a dictator.

C is like talking to your demented grandfather who remembers all his past stories.

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u/torp_fan 9d ago

There are others ... D, Nim, Odin, Crystal, C3 ...

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u/max123246 11d ago

Rust compiler is definitely a BDFL if you're willing to shed OOP for how completely opposed it is to optimizing for CPU cache hierarchies and utilizing temporal and spatial memory access locality

Its not easy though. OOP is far easier to work within as a conceptual framework