TOtodsacerdoti·Dec 17, 2024Submission
1 points · Open discussioncarbon-language
carbon-lang
C++2022–2026
carbon-language / carbon-lang
carbon-lang
Carbon Language's main repository: documents, design, implementation, and related tools. (NOTE: Carbon Language is experimental; see README)
78Distinct people
93Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
34KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Carbon Language's main repository: documents, design, implementation, and related tools. (NOTE: Carbon Language is experimental; see README)
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- hsutter/cppfront · linked in 5 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year93 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2022-07-19 14:05:02 UTC to 2026-08-19 10:43:32 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 32 | 2 | 30 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 27 | 3 | 24 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 15 | 4 | 11 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 4 | 8 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 1 | 6 |
What Hacker News says
15 sourcesPeople like to always talk about Carbon like that, yet the team is the first to point out anyone that can use something else, should.
Carbon is an experiment, that they aren't sure how it is going to work out in first place.
> "If you can use Rust, ignore Carbon"
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/e09bf82d...
> "We want to better understand whether we can build a language that meets our successor language criteria, and whether the resulting language can gather a critical mass of interest within the larger C++ industry and communit"
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/e09bf82d...
In The two factions of C++I for one started working on a new project in C++ rather than Rust. I think it's unclear whether Rust is going to be the successor at this point. It's probably never going to pick up in the games industry, QT is C++ (and Rust bindings will always be second class or they could end up unmaintained), has better compile times and is said to be undisputed when it comes to high performance. Obviously the tool for the job factor is most critical.
Career wise, many people are picking up Rust and almost no one is picking up C++, while experienced C++ devs either retire or switch to a higher level language due to landscape change. I would trust supply and demand to be in favour of C++ 10 years from now.
There are also attempts to make C++ more memory safe like Carbon[1] or Circle compiler [2]. If they succeed, why would anyone want to switch to Rus
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t? Also Rust is not ideal for security from a different perspective - I think the lack of a package manager is one C++ strongest points. After working for 9 years with npm, you really appreciate that the dependency you install is usually just a single dependency (even an option for a single header file is common), when there's a package manager, people will abuse it (like install a package with 3 dependencies of its own for something that could be 50 LOC copy-paste) and managing the security of the supply chain is nearly impossible (it will be a legal requirement soon in EU though).
Anyway, I wanted to ask. How is the contracting market looking in C++ world? I'm guessing it depends on the domain heavily? I'm mainly asking about QT and anything that would be desktop / mobile apps / systems programming except video games, but I'm curious in general.
[1] https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang
[2] https://github.com/seanbaxter/circle
Thanks for clarifying that point. It's worth pointing out that the safety strategy doc[0] mentions that
>A key subset of safety categories Carbon should address are:
>[...]
>Data race safety protects against racing memory access: when a thread accesses (read or write) a memory location concurrently with a different writing thread and without synchronizing
But then later in the doc it says
>It's possible to modify the Rust model several ways in order to reduce the burden on C++ developers:
>Don't offer safety guarantees for data races, eliminating RefCell.
>[...]
>Overall, Carbon is making a compromise around safety in order to give a path for C++ to evolve. [...]
One could read this as saying that guaranteed safety against data races is not a goal. Perhaps this doc could be reworded? Maybe something like "Carbon does not see guaranteed sa
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fety against data races as strictly necessary to achieve its security goals but we still currently aim for a model that will prevent them."
[0] https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/trunk/do...
Also, check out Google's in-development Carbon Language, designed to address the same issues with a Kotlin-like approach. It's an entirely new language that could interoperate with existing C++ code/library.
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang
In Circle C++ with memory safetyIt's even a core point for Carbon, their hopeful C++ replacement
Under language goals on their readme,
> We also have explicit non-goals for Carbon, notably including:
> * A stable application binary interface (ABI) for the entire language and library
> * Perfect backwards or forwards compatibility
There's also this blurb
> Our goals are focused on migration from one version of Carbon to the next rather than compatibility between them. This is rooted in our experience with evolving software over time more generally and a live-at-head model. Any transition, whether based on backward compatibility or a migration plan, will require some manual intervention despite our best efforts, due to Hyrum's Law, and so we should acknowledge that upgrades require active migrations.
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/trunk/do...
In Gio UI – Cross-platform GUI for GoFrom Chandler Carruth who leads the C++, Clang, and LLVM teams at Google:
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/f9ce0b19...
In Ask HN: Why would you ever use C++ for a new project over Rust?How about Google's Carbon language?
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang
In Overview: What are Cpp2 and cppfront? How do I get and build cppfront?The roadmap for Carbon [0] mentions wanting to have basic, non-trivial programs written in Carbon by the end of 2024. They're aiming for a v0.1 release in 2025. If it gains traction, they're aiming for a v1.0 beyond 2027.
I don't think anyone outside Google will seriously adopt this before it reaches v1.0. Even within Google, they may choose other options.
[0] - https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/trunk/do...
In Overview: What are Cpp2 and cppfront? How do I get and build cppfront?I wonder how this compares with Carbon -> C++ [0].
Carbon is (was?) a fantastic proposal, but not sure if it has lost steam since it was introduced or how well it is being adopted (be it inside Google or outside)?
Being able to incrementally/interchangeably use/call existing C++ code (and vice versa) seems like a great design choice (in Carbon) without having to introspect the actual generated code.
Not sure how easy it is to get the cppfront-generated C++ to bridge with existing C++ code (and vice versa)?
[0] https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang
In Overview: What are Cpp2 and cppfront? How do I get and build cppfront?Carbon Language Newsletter, the Carbon Copy, February 2024
2 points · Open discussionCarbon was started by Chandler Carruth, at Google, but they wanted to move it to broader governance quickly. It's not under the Google GitHub today, but its own org.
https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang/blob/trunk/do...
And Meta is pretty clearly committed to Rust at this point.
In Odin Programming LanguageI don't know about a list online but here's what I know off, in the C/C++ realm
Odin - https://odin-lang.org/
Zig - https://ziglang.org/
Beef - https://www.beeflang.org/
Jai (not public yet) - [1]
Carbon (C++) - https://github.com/carbon-language/carbon-lang
D Lang - https://dlang.org/
Rust - https://www.rust-lang.org/
cppfront (Herb Sutter's C++ frontend/syntax) - https://github.com/hsutter/cppfront
Nim - https://nim-lang.org/
Crystal (not sure if this counts) - https://crystal-lang.org/
Vale - https://vale.dev/
Hylo (formerly Val, just found it now) - https://www.hylo-lang.org/
Vala (compiles to C, some GTK apps are written in this) - https://vala.dev/
C3 - https://github.com/c3lang/c3c
Rune (last commit 7 months ago) - https://github.com/google/rune
Kit (dead, last commit 5 years ago) - https://github.com/kitlang/kit
There's probably m
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ore. That's all I can recall off the top of my head and/or what I have in my notes.
There's also Haskell [2], which compiles down to C-- [3] (a C like language). Not sure if this counts either.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Blow#2017%E2%80%93pre...
[2]: https://www.haskell.org/
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C--