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Comment by claiir | Hacker News Reader

> currently (as of Q3 2025) the fastest-growing of the top four languages in the world… +90% users in the past 3.5 years.

Because of AI, right?

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C++ is one of the languages less suited to the strengths of coding agents.

The language which still supports C-style pointers, arbitrary datatype conversions, and inherits architecture-specific undefined behavior gives you too many ways to fail at solving a problem.

As a programmer, I love coding in C++ because I know what I'm doing. I'd hate reviewing C++ code though.

Those Python AI libraries....

If this is a rhetorical question I genuinely don't know what's the implied answer. Why would AI specifically make C++ grow?

A few reasons: 1. Header files make C++ verbose. Header files are well within LLM's ability 2. LLMs can handle setting up cmake for you 3. C++ is very well documented relative to (most) newer languages 4. LLMs can port modern features like websockets and build API wrappers easily, reducing the disadvantage against web (since most documentation is for JS/python/go)

Coding languages have been developing for speed of (manual) writing - akin to how human languages did with modern alphabets. Now that writing is a lot easier, languages will likely evolve towards a focus on execution (or in the case of human languages, speed of reading and precision of understanding)

All of those seem like barriers that make C++ unappealing in general, but you're deciding to overcome the barriers using an LLM and seeing that as a strength somehow?

That's like every application of LLM-coding I have ever seen people talking about.

Yeah, C++, the language known for its speed of reading...

Just speculation, but I think we would expect a language to grow if AI is effective with it. C++ has a lot of training data. Most large software projects are written in C++: web browsers, compilers, 3D renderers, game engines, UI toolkits, etc.

AI is also probably more effective with statically typed languages since the compiler catches a wider range of errors.

Ideas:

- more accessible now that AI handles the high tooling activation energy

- more history and pre-AI internet content

- pybind11 is pretty popular to pair Python logic with C++ performance

- cpp committe is pretty bullish on new contracts and reflection features making C++ a glue language that AI can write well

The GPGPU frameworks and JIT compilers that actually make those Python libraries usable.

Partly - the documentary gives that a mention https://youtu.be/lI7tMxzSJ7w?t=3862

Also

>It is because we have enduring demand for languages that are good at performance per watt.

(1 min in from above link)

Let's assume that it's because of AI for this case.

Is this good or bad?

but do vibe coders even use c++? won't they use js or python?

Yes, they need it for the AI libraries they call from Python.

Reddit's r/cpp has always had some level of "My First X" posts where somebody goes from their first C++ lesson to being confident they've written the "World's Best X" in about a week. The AI slop made this much worse because now the author has been told by ChatGPT or whatever that they're a genius.

All the popular PLs have this problem to some extent.

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