This is literally my career wind-down/retirement plan. I'll be 62 when the Year-2038 problem hits, and they're going to need to overturn some rocks to find C and C++ systems programmers who still can read from a monitor.

Lmao “read from a monitor” as instead of from whatever fancy ARVR dev environments we’ll be on in 15 years?

I could see AR/VR dev environments being viable enough to not get laughed at in 15 years, but there's no way we give up 2D displays in the majority by that time.

In 15 years? Potentially we'll have brain interfaces by then. Just imagine the job you want done and you'll "see" in your mind's eye the existing solutions in your code-base and then on the (contemporary version of the) internet.

don't kid yourself, those brain interfaces will be emulating 80-character width terminals

Indeed, if they can get one of the few jobs that frees up every few years.

But why?

Why not be an proficient Python developer and make the same compensation[0] with better docs, better libraries, better codebases, no compilation annoyances[1], easier to read code, and fewer not-defined-by-the-spec weirdness?

C++ would have to pay 4x what Python pays for me to even consider doing it again. It literally makes me sad when I write software in it. Especially the libraries.

[0] Mid-six digits as an IC is very doable in North America.

[1] If you want to count the occasional Cython thing, fine. Almost no compilation annoyances.

> Mid-six digits as an IC is very doable in North America.

No, it's not. Some people who read this comment probably do make that, and it's great, but it's not the norm. You have to be exceptional to get there.

I've been there?

It's very doable and far easier than understanding C++ in my opinion.

> Mid-six digits

Do you mean $500k? On levels.fyi for San Francisco you're talking about the 95% percentile of people who upload their salaries (which tends to the higher range anyway), and that's mostly stocks. So in the highest paying part of North America, at the highest paying companies where employees put their salaries on levels.fyi, a small minority can reach $500k. North America as a whole? Nope.

I worked for an SF company as an IC remotely from Toronto. Total comp was $500k USD yearly. I wasn't the only one, either, and the other guy didn't even have a technical education. He was completely self-taught and just steadily made progress by being humble and curious and hard-working.

Look, I don't really care about money after a certain point. So I'm not trying to encourage people to do stuff for money. What I'm trying to say is that there is a world of software development renumeration that is achievable if you keep developing skill and it is far less challenging than dealing with a C++ codebase.