D and Nim

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 5 January 2015 at 13:47:24 UTC, Paulo  Pinto wrote:
> For C++ there is the Itanium ABI, COM/WinRT on Windows and the 
> upcoming C++17 ABI.

If there will be a C++17 ABI and it is adopted, then that will be 
the beginning of the end for C++ IMO. (Wishful thinking... ;-)

> Yes there are lots of options, still the ones that live longer 
> as system programming languages, are the ones that get OS 
> vendor adoption.
>
> So far, it has always been the case.

By my definition of "system level programming" the only adopted 
system level programming language since the 1980s has been C (and 
C++ only as C-with-bells-and-whistles). Then you have some fringe 
languages such as Ada, and now probably also Rust as it is 
approaching version 1.0.

I cannot really see Nim or D taking that slot. They appear to 
have too wide a scope. I think only a focused language that can 
bring along better optimization and manual memory handling has a 
chance against C/C++ in system programming. (We have to remember 
that C/C++ are moving too with various extensions that also are 
gaining traction: OpenMP, Cilk...)