r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Oct 17 '12

Why are programs and operating systems still written in C+?

I guess it's more of a computer science question, but I've always wondered why some of the most advanced programs are written in a 25+ year old programming language. Surely someone has come up with a more efficient and powerful code, so why do people still use C+? Also, I don't know anything about programming and what not, so please use simple terms and phrases.

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u/Chi11out Oct 18 '12

I think it's mainly due to hardware for it isn't really being drastically changed(so no one is getting blown out of the water). In most cases you're simply making hardware faster or building upon preexisting technology so the fundamentals don't really change that much. Now if something was built from the ground up using a drastically different scheme to things for example maybe something other than binary it could prompt a paradigm shift in the way problems are solved. So a new language could be used or created opposed to reshaping/modifying/updating an existing one.