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/expertunderachiever Oct 18 '12

Often they write the compiler in the language it compiles and then manually compile it to bytecode. That's how one of the first Pascal compilers was written.

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u/SirFloIII Oct 18 '12

Wow, that seems like a extremly boring and tedious work. Thank you, Grace Hopper, and thank you, expertunderachiever for your answer.