Tech Waves: C++ Surge, HarmonyOS Open‑Source, Android 11 & More

Today several major events occurred that developers should note.

September Programming Language Rankings

C++ climbed back, achieving a 1.48% increase and moving to fourth place, while Java fell by 3.18% compared to the same period last year.

Historically, C++ peaked at 17.53% in August 2003, then declined to a low of 4.55% in 2017. The recent surge reflects the maturation of the C++20 standard and new module mechanisms.

Languages with notable rank changes:

PHP: moved from rank 9 to 8

R: moved from rank 8 to 9

Rust: moved from rank 20 to 18

Dart: moved from rank 24 to 20

Classic Visual Basic: moved from rank 17 to 22

Dart, introduced in 2011 by Google, is an object‑oriented, class‑based language that can compile to JavaScript and supports interfaces, mixins, abstract classes, reified generics, optional typing, and a sound type system.

Huawei HarmonyOS OS 2.0 Released and Open‑Sourced

At the Huawei Developer Conference 2020, Huawei announced HarmonyOS 2.0 (OS 2.0) and made its code available to the OpenAtom Foundation. Developers can now access SDKs, tools, documentation, and simulators for large‑screen, watch, and car devices, with mobile SDKs slated for December.

The open‑source roadmap includes:

September 10 2020: open source for devices 128 KB–128 MB

April 2021: open source for devices 128 MB–4 GB

October 2021: open source for devices > 4 GB

Huawei aims to build an open ecosystem, with over 800 partners in the HiLink hardware ecosystem and more than 9.6 × 10⁴ apps integrated into HMS Core 5.0, serving 490 million active users.

Open‑source project URLs:

https://www.openatom.org/openharmony

https://openharmony.gitee.com/

Android 11 Released

Google announced Android 11, with its source code published to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). Key new features include:

Conversation section added to the notification shade

"Bubbles" API for floating chat windows

Quick access to device controls via long‑press power button

Media control for fast output device switching

One‑time permissions for microphone, camera, and location

WeChat Search Becomes a Comprehensive Search Engine

WeChat launched the “Search” function in chat dialogs on September 9, allowing users to long‑press a bubble and select “Search”. The feature now connects accounts, content, services, goods, music, novels, brands, and video accounts across the WeChat ecosystem. Commercialization is not a near‑term goal; the focus remains on improving user experience.

OpenJDK Migrated to GitHub

The migration of OpenJDK from Mercurial to Git and GitHub is complete. The repository https://github.com/openjdk/jdk is now active, enabling contributors to submit changes via GitHub accounts.

Angular 10.1 Stable and 11.next.1 Released

Angular 10.1.0, released on September 2, brings compiler and router performance improvements and a new message extraction tool. Angular 10 will become the production version on June 24, emphasizing quality, tooling, and ecosystem enhancements over new features.

New features include a date‑range picker in Angular Material, CommonJS import warnings to help avoid larger bundles, and a stricter project initialization flag ( ng new --strict) that improves maintainability and error detection.

Angular 11 is under active development and expected by year‑end, with 11.next.1 adding collaboration enhancements, lazy‑loaded empty routes, and major form API changes such as asynchronous validators.

Author: 万能的大雄 – 21CTO Community