Comment by its_magic

> I don't read these sorts of article as technical position papers.

I do.

> People say, out loud, "I use C and not C++" to say something about themselves.

Just like you are telling us something about yourself right now.

> ISTM that certain circles there's this perception that C is somehow more hardcore.

That's not why we use it.

There are certainly many noobs who think C is hardcore. That just goes to show how low the bar has fallen since the masses rushed into computing.

Many of these people also think of changing their own oil or a flat tire as being a superpower. Some could not identify the business end of a screwdriver if their life depended on it. Their opinion on the relatively difficulty or impressiveness of anything is to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

There are many good reasons to use C. If nothing else it demonstrates that the user is a free thinker and not a fucking muppet. It's the sort of thing that attracts me and drives you away. That's valuable.

> Nobody's impressed by using it over a modern language.

1) The word "modern" is not a magic talisman that makes anything it's attached to automatically worthy.

2) "Nobody" does not mean what you apparently think it means. Free clue: others exist in the world beside yourself and your self-absorbed clique.

3) Nobody with a brain is impressed by whatever the midwits are doing. Anyone who can fog a mirror can follow the herd off the nearest cliff. It's the outliers who are impressive.

4) Technically anything since the 1500s is "modern." It's such a vague, useless word that serves no purpose other than "virtue" signalling.

C++ is fucking garbage. Always has been. Keeps getting worse and worse every year. Enjoy your PAGES full of indecipherable gibberish ("error diagnostics"), your miserably slow compile times, and your closet full of footguns and decades old sticks of sweating dynamite. Slowest language by far, other than the so very modern abomination that is Rust. You can keep it.