I don't see why it wouldn't become as popular as Go, which is still a pretty niche language despite the Silicon Valley and HN hype.<p>C++ is an entire other beast. Asking whether a language will be as popular as "Go or C++" is like asking whether it'll be as popular as "Julia or Java".<p>C++ is one of the top 5, maybe one of the top 2 languages that existing software is built in. For about 15 (maybe even 20) years before Java matured, and then another 5-10 before C# became the default for new Windows projects, it was by leaps and bounds the most common language for building desktop and enterprise software. There are still billions of lines of C++ code in production and being maintained, possibly trillions. Not to mention new projects still being begun using it.<p>FWIW, I personally think Rust has a better chance of becoming the next C++ than Go does, but who can really predict the future anyway?
I sincerely hope not. The last thing we need is another down-in-the-weeds language for bit twiddling.<p>Moore's law is practically dead now, so most of the newer CPU-bound algorithms start off using GPUs (where you're stuck with GLSL), then move on to custom chips (like Google's tensor units for ML, or Bitmain's ASICs for bitcoin mining).<p>If we're headed back to the mainframe architecture of putting the inner-loop stuff in hardware, then this is a wonderful time to start doing more with higher-level languages.<p>Even as things stand, Java and some Lisps are as fast a C for many applications, and they take care of the memory issues just as well as Rust does, but without the effort or cognitive overhead that Rust requires.