> bury your head in the sand if you want
Great chat, as always. :)
I don't understand this - they are not competing brands or sports teams but tools.
Why would it matter and to whom if C++ use would decline?
If use of C++ declines then I don't understand how that would make the language a lesser tool.
Choose the best tool for the job and all that.
Competition exists all around us, all the time, whether we like it or not.
And the competition between C++ and Rust is very clear. I, for example, would likely be spending more time / effort on learning the latest C++ standards if Rust didn't exist. And likely hate my life a little bit, unless I could exclusively stick to C++ "the good parts" if such a subset exists and I didn't need to interface as much with existing C++ code.
If C++ use declines, then there are fewer opportunities for me. So you can count me as a member of team C++.
My focus has been to brand myself as "domain expert" in few algorithmic domains rather than "C++" expert so this may affect my point of view, though.
It isn't necessarily a threat. I'm pretty comfortable in a bunch of different languages but just enjoy C++ more than the others. To use a car analogy, I have no problem driving automatic but I really like driving stick.
The hypothesis is that C++ will decline because it becomes the lesser tool (where "lesser tool" means it excels only in increasingly small niches) if it doesn't adapt. That said, the C++ community seems to want to adapt and remain relevant, as indicated by its significant progress over the last decade.
As for why someone might care about the usage of a programming language: because "ease of finding developers" and "quality and breadth of ecosystem" are major factors in deciding on new projects. I.e., "the best tool for the job" is often the one with the broader ecosystem and more developers, all else equal. So these factors feed back on each other.
If the use declines to zero, then all the effort someone put into developing C++ compilers and related tooling had been for naught, as are C++ development skills.
The notion of how to write a specific language such as C++ is immaterial compared to the capability to design and implement complex software systems and those skills are quite portable between languages. The best employers tend to recognize this.