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ODBMS.org interview Greg Law about debugging C++
ODBMS Industry Watch
by Roberto V. Zicari on April 21, 2021
“Like it or not, debugging is part of programming. There is a lot of research and cool technology about preventing bugs (programming language features or design decisions that make certain bugs impossible) or catching bugs very early (through static or dynamic analysis or better testing), and all this is of course laudable and good stuff. But I’ve often been struck by how little attention is placed on making it easier to fix those bugs when they inevitably do happen.” — Greg Law
Q1: You are a prolific speaker at C++ conferences and podcasts. In your experience, who is still using C++?
Greg Law: C++ is used widely and its use is growing. I see a lot of C++ usage in Data Management, Networking, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), Aerospace, Games, Finance, etc.
It’s probably true that use of some other languages – particularly JavaScript and Python – is growing even faster, but those languages are weak where C++ is strong and vice versa. Go is growing a lot and Rust is getting a lot of attention right now and has some very attractive properties. 10-15 years ago, it felt almost like programming languages were “done” but these days, we’re seeing a lot of innovation both in terms of new or newish languages, and development of older languages. Even plain old C is seeing a bit of a resurgence. We are going to continue living in a multi-language world; I expect C++ to remain an important language for a long while yet….