"The good news, though, is that 34.7% of respondents learning to code are using C++, placing it in the top 6 programming languages of that category."
One of the problems C++ has is that this doesn't mean much. In the late 90s when I was an undergrad at college, the main language in the curriculum was C++...
... except it really wasn't. It was a dialect subset of C++ that was what undergrads could wrap their minds around. It was basically C with classes, and even then, the undergrads did a lot of copying and pasting around that whole class thing.
I remember when I was a TA in an early class for the majors, and the central staff updated GCC to a version with namespace support in the middle of one my labs, and suddenly every person in the class had their programs break simultaneously, because this version of GCC had namespace support, and now everybody needed "using std;". Fortunately I could read the resulting error message and worked the problem out in about 10 minutes, but none of the "people learning C++" knew what namespaces were.
I occasionally glance at C++ learning programs the schools are using. They haven't meaningfully changed.
So, a lot of those people "learning C++" really aren't. I expect your average bachelor's degree holder in a programming degree couldn't tell you about move semantics, or explain what exceptions really do in C++, or any number of the sorts of details you need to call yourself a C++ programmer in 2023, let alone a skilled one. C++ is so big.
I feel like C++ is not just big, but in arcane ways. Like needing to know move semantics, but for being such an important concept, there's very little in the way of the language helping you understand it.
Also, it's changed a lot. I learned C++ as my first language, but haven't used it nor kept up with it for the past 15 years. I'm pretty sure that idiomatic C++ is just a different language now than the one I learned, despite the name and basic syntax staying the same.
One of the problems C++ has is that this doesn't mean much. In the late 90s when I was an undergrad at college, the main language in the curriculum was C++...
... except it really wasn't. It was a dialect subset of C++ that was what undergrads could wrap their minds around. It was basically C with classes, and even then, the undergrads did a lot of copying and pasting around that whole class thing.
I remember when I was a TA in an early class for the majors, and the central staff updated GCC to a version with namespace support in the middle of one my labs, and suddenly every person in the class had their programs break simultaneously, because this version of GCC had namespace support, and now everybody needed "using std;". Fortunately I could read the resulting error message and worked the problem out in about 10 minutes, but none of the "people learning C++" knew what namespaces were.
I occasionally glance at C++ learning programs the schools are using. They haven't meaningfully changed.
So, a lot of those people "learning C++" really aren't. I expect your average bachelor's degree holder in a programming degree couldn't tell you about move semantics, or explain what exceptions really do in C++, or any number of the sorts of details you need to call yourself a C++ programmer in 2023, let alone a skilled one. C++ is so big.