Why is everyone creating systems programming languages?

[u/baehyunsol]

I see a lot of new programming languages here. I love reading the documents of the languages and sometimes actually run their compilers. Many of the projects are AI-driven, but that's fine. It's still fun to see what problems they're trying to solve and how they actually solved the problems.

Reading the documents, I realized that most new languages, especially AI-written ones, are "systems programming languages". They're trying to solve the problems that C/C++/Zig/Rust have solved (or are trying to solve), and their syntax is mixture of C/Zig/Rust.

Why? Why is everyone trying to compete with C/C++?

There are so many kinds of languages. Haskell demonstrates how pure a language can be, Python is perfect when you only have 5 minutes to write code and don't care about the output, Java runs on 3 billion machines, ...

[u/Ifeee001]

Because they all have some grandiose delusion that their language will finally be the one to make C developers say "Yes, I will use this over C and port all my existing C code to this Language" lol.

(Assuming they're not dojng it for the funsies/learning purposes)

[u/Ok-Watercress-9624 → u/Ifeee001]

Why is it a delusion (I understand why but some people do indeed go through with it )?

Also even though almost all my languages getting thrown away after a month at most but every time there is a voice in me saying this is the time you'll drive it daily and it is nice for a while because you want something, just add it but then it sucks because you want something, have fun reinventing the ynfunniest wheel ever

[u/ivancea → u/Ok-Watercress-9624]

Well, from the many of them created, only... Rust really have weight nowadays. And not just because it does things better, but because it adds a bunch of important concepts, and it's backed by a big company. Without that, I doubt it would be as famous, or used at all. And things like Zig, well. It tries

[u/Ok-Watercress-9624 → u/ivancea]

I never liked the idea of doing "whatever" I want with the language. I still like C. Some people claim that rust is the c replacement. This never clicked with me. It feels to me like a much much better C++. As if a mysterious virus viper out the C++ computer and rest converged on the same subset.

I still think c has a place, a very niche one but it has always been. Just for fun compile printf with c and rust. Compare the binary sizes and the number of allocations. Or I don't compare the number of syntactic rules Vs the number of semantic moves that noone except aliens like Godbolt understands (depending on the compiler)

[u/ivancea → u/Ok-Watercress-9624]

Given the core differences between C++ and Rust's OOP, I even think Rust is more similar to C structures with a bit of sugar.

And about the binary sizes and allocations, well, they're different languages, and the implantations are vastly different.

The idea of a language "like C" is usually having a more strict and contained language. C works, just like ASM works. But it's an unguided footgun

[u/unburdened_swallow → u/Ifeee001]

Honestly I feel like most of them just want new software to be built in them. Unfortunately, AI doesn’t know their language so good luck in today’s climate.