On December 25, 2021, people not only celebrated Christmas but also the successful launch of the one of the greatest invention of mankind, the James Webb Telescope. It is the world’s largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built according to NASA. It is expected that it will be operational 6 months after launching in the distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
Many people are wondering how such complex invention was built and how it was programmed to function millions of kilometers away from Earth. On a conference held on January 9, 2022 about the updates on James Webb Telescope, a journalist asked one of the NASA expert what programming language is used to run the James Webb Telescope. The expert said that majority of the programming language used is C++. C++ is commonly used in embedded system because it sits in between higher-level software and hardware, allowing to access and control hardware directly without sacrificing the benefits of a high-level language. It is particularly effective for hardware that will need to be around for a while, as programs written in C++ can operate for decades at a time due to the language’s high stability.
Although C++ was released 37 years ago, it is still one of the most relevant programming language due to its incredible reliability, performance, and versatility. Billions of devices and applications running today are coded in C++ so just about all programming languages, it will permanently relevant, since software never wears out.