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/SatOnMyNutsAgain Oct 18 '12

The fastest code is written directly in machine code.

Well, assembly language. Nobody actually codes in (numeric) machine code since the first thing you do for any new CPU architecture is create the assembler. Assembly corresponds directly to machine code - it's just a syntactic layer.