In my mind FORTRAN and COBOL are better languages than C/C++. If people really cared about performance they'd write code in some kind of macro assembler rather than have their CPU performing meaningless activity to keep up C/C++ calling conventions. (This is particularly shocking in the case of AVR-8 code for the Arduino where a program that could keep almost all its states in the rather large register file is moving the stack pointer around for no real reason.)<p>Mostly they want to keep using their legacy libraries and that is the whole reason why "safe" C/C++ is an oxymoron. So long as you maintain backwards compatibility with dangerous libraries and people keep using dangerous libraries than even simple programs that they write are dangerous.<p>Really the NSA should take one of those backdoors they are hiding and trash every C compiler on the planet.