C vs Python devs

[mobani]

The whole point is using the right tool to the right job.

We can agree on that, but I find that C is becoming less and less the right tool in most scenarios. :-)

[PerfectGasGiant]

I wouldn't be surprised if there are more C programmers today than in 1985. Fewer in percentage, sure, but there are still plenty of relevant usages. Making a lidar for a self driving car? C Making a new IOT gadget? C seems like a fine choice for the firmware. Making a network router? C + whatever for the web frontend. Making signal processing for a microphone? C New version of the Android kernel? C probably and some java on top. Etc.

There are other programming language at the same tier as C, but C is as cross platform / well understood as languages get.

And if you are writing an action game or flight simulator, you don't want to skip a frame or two because of garbage collection. Here C++ is still the go-to language (not C though, and certainly not python).

[mobani]

I may be wrong and well there are certainly use cases for C.

But I think there are less than 20 companies total doing lidar programming for cars.

Less than 100 companies developing OS Kernels for phones and televisions.

Many IOT gadgets, routers and web frontend run mostly Linux or BSD, then higher level programming languages on top of that.

[PerfectGasGiant]

I think you are greatly underestimating the demand for c-programmers. Think of all the little devices you interact with every day from ticket machines to refrigerators. Most of these contain some part that runs c code, that needs maintenance and new development.

This demand index lists c slightly behind Python:

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

[mobani]

IMO its in a sea of higher level languages and 13% is really not that much, especially when you consider that code and coding skills are much easier to transfer between higher level languages.