Post:

If you’re still shipping load‑bearing code in C, C++, Python, or vanilla JavaScript in 2025, you’re gambling with house money and calling it “experience.”

As systems scale, untyped or foot‑gun‑heavy languages don’t just get harder to work with—they hit a complexity cliff. Every new feature is another chance for a runtime type error or a memory bug to land in prod. Now layer LLM‑generated glue code on top of that. More code, more surface area, less anyone truly understands. In that world, “we’ll catch it in tests” is wishful thinking, not a strategy.

We don’t live in 1998 anymore. We have languages that:

  • Make whole classes of bugs unrepresentable (Rust, TypeScript)
  • Give you memory safety and concurrency sanity by default (Rust, Go)
  • Provide static structure that both humans and LLMs can lean on as guardrails, not red tape

At this point, choosing C/C++ for safety‑critical paths, or dynamic languages for the core of a large system, isn’t just “old school.” It’s negligence with better marketing.

Use Rust, Go, or TypeScript for anything that actually matters. Use Python/JS at the edges, for scripts and prototypes.

For production, load‑bearing paths in 2025 and beyond, anything else is you saying, out loud:

“I’m okay with avoidable runtime failures and undefined behavior in my critical systems.”

Are you?

Comment:

Nonsense. If your code has reached the point of unmaintainable complexity, then blame the author, not the language.

  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
    5·
    5 days ago

    True, but you’re not gonna be setting the access levels or doing anything else with control registers on a Correx-M in pure C, let alone boot to a safe state with zeroed registers.

    • arthropod_shift@programming.dev
      4·
      5 days ago

      Yeah, if your bootloader is expected to handle that you’re going to need assembly. That can also be delegated to the kernel, RTOS, or bare metal reset vector later on in the boot sequence, though. I had to write a bootloader for an embedded system like this once and it basically just applied firmware updates, validated the firmware, and handed control over to the firmware.

        • arthropod_shift@programming.dev
          3·
          5 days ago

          My point is that assembly isn’t strictly required. You can do memory-mapped reads and writes from C all you want, which is enough for plenty of I/O: storage, serial, sensors, GPIOs
 You can build quite a few things with these without touching system registers.

          I’m not saying we should abolish assembly. Just that it isn’t a universal requirement.

          • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
            2·
            5 days ago

            My point is that there’s still gonna be some somewhere. You’re just trying to handwave it away because somebody else wrote it.

            • arthropod_shift@programming.dev
              2·
              5 days ago

              Not necessarily. Let’s say that


              • The stack pointer is defined in the vector table to point somewhere into RAM.
              • The reset vector points to some function _entry(), with a linker script to take care of its memory placement.
              • All other interrupt handlers are arbitrary C functions.

              You can compile only your C source file that defines _entry() and interrupt vectors, then flash the resulting firmware. No assembly involved, no external linkage, and no stdlib required.

              • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
                11·
                5 days ago

                Yes, and this is ignoring interrupts, access privileges, thread stacks 
 what’s the C equivalent of the MSR and MRS instructions?

                • arthropod_shift@programming.dev
                  2·
                  5 days ago

                  Again, those aren’t universally required. You can make an embedded device that reads the ambient light levels and turns on an LED when it’s dark without thread stacks, privileges, or interrupts. Don’t make your system more complicated than it needs to be.

                  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world
                    22·
                    5 days ago

                    Turning on an LED when it’s dark doesn’t require a microcontroller, let alone a Cortex-M. You can accomplish that with analog electronics.

                    Anyway, you’re moving the goalposts all over the place. What happened to the RTOS kernel from earlier?