“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” - Ghandi It doesn't always go that way. In some ways Ghandi won, then worked backwards. Now let me talk about GCC. Intel has a compiler. Microsoft has a compiler. The world has a complier. Nobody will every start from scratch again. I promise. Its over. The last compiler has been written. Python is written in C, Java is written in C, PHP is written in C, Unix is written in C. Everything that matters is dependent on C in someway. There won't be a D. C++ is pointless in comparison. Software languages don't improve the way hardware does. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet I have written software in many languages and aside from nice libraries each one has the same level of difficulty. Given a difficult task (where the major challenges are not already written into libraries) I find that the challenge is communicating with a computer. Relationships are hard regardless of the language. I think the abstractions defined by C and UNIX are correct for our understanding of the physical world. Until our understanding of the physical world dramatically changes we will use these abstractions. Other languages and systems have a their benefits. However these benefits come from more temporary places.