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tkinom

I prefer data on evaluating a programming language's potential:

Search indeed.com for

C++ : 4287 jobs.

golang : 71 jobs

Java : 6817 jobs

Rust : 7 jobs

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Trust me. You would not enjoy roughly the 92% of Java jobs out of that number. My Java work was easily the most corporatish "enteprise" soul-sucking nightmare that I'm glad to be out of forever. I bet the majority of the Golang jobs are fun, in small teams though. I know which one I'd rather work on.

How much of that is Java's fault, though? Would those jobs be any less horrible if that software was written in COBOL or C++ plus CORBA? Probably not.

Rust is beginning to be evaluated by large tech companies for production use (I can attest). When companies start using it and blogging about it, other companies will catch on and do the same. My money is on this number rising. Rust is something truly special, and I'd be shocked for it not to gain widespread usage.

Rust hit 1.0 18 months ago while everything else on that list is between 5-33 years old. Give it time.

That isn't a programming language's potential. Those job posts reflect current market demand, not potential. How much demand will there be for Rust programmers three or four or ten years from now, not just today.

Anyway, if you're going to take a purely mercantile approach to evaluating programming languages, you should consider the salaries these employers are offering rather than the number of job listings. Consider supply as well as demand.

I also prefer data, but this data isn't useful. Sure, there are a lot of companies looking to hire C++ programmers, but why? Is it because of growth in the demand for C++ application development? Or is it because C++ developers are moving on and the companies are having trouble replacing them? There's probably a mixture of both, but I believe we're going to see a continuing slide towards the latter.

This article is mostly poo with a few bits of goodness sprinkled in to detract from the stench. Now, directly to your comment, I usually evaluate on the ability to get things done. Often that means libraries. Linking to C/C++ libraries is relatively easy so I'd say there is a lot of potential. If you go back in time to 1996, how many jobs were there for Java? I doubt that many, probably took a few years...even with Sun pushing it. C/C++, even Fortran are going to be around for a long time. Languages like Swift get a good kick in the rear by sheer force of Apple's market share. Rust has only the user community to adopt it. Adoption is fairly easy, market penetration is tough (lots of adopters). It'll either happen or it won't.

The go results are inaccurate because "go" is not searchable and most people write "go" instead of golang. Try searching for "backend go" in indeed.com and you'll see what I mean.

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