Is Google’s Carbon the Future Successor to C++? Insights from Bjarne Stroustrup

Google’s Carbon Project Overview

Google engineer Chandler Carruth leads the Carbon project, with consultants Kate Gregory and Richard Smith, aiming to create a new programming language that explores capabilities beyond what C++ can currently offer.

Bjarne Stroustrup, the inventor of C++, commented that many new languages try to become C++ successors; he welcomes experimentation but notes that Carbon is still very young, lacks a formal specification, and therefore he cannot provide a meaningful technical assessment at this stage.

Stroustrup also did not address Carruth’s claims about shortcomings in C++ evolution, such as performance concerns or the focus on language standardization over direct language improvements.

The Carbon project plans to follow an open‑source language model similar to Kubernetes, prioritizing migration capabilities over memory safety in its early stages, with a long‑term goal of achieving safety comparable to Go or Swift.

When asked why Carbon is based on C++17 rather than C++20, Carruth explained that at the time C++20 compilers were still immature, and the team may consider moving to C++20 when feasible.

The name “Carbon” was chosen simply because it starts with the letter “C”; there is no deeper meaning behind it, as clarified by Carbon maintainer Jon Ross‑Perkins.