The increasing cost of C++ and other old tech

If you are running a project that uses C++, you may want to think about its costs. As I see it, the cost of C++ is increasing.

The cost of compilers and libraries is remaining constant. (Whether you are using Microsoft's Visual Studio, the open source gcc, or a different toolset.)

The increasing cost is not in the tools, but in the people.

First and most obvious: the time to build applications in C++ is longer than the time to build applications in modern languages. (Notice how I have not-so-subtlely omitted C++ from the set of "modern" languages. But modern or not, programming in C++ takes more time.) This drives up your costs.

Recent college graduates don't learn C++; they learn Java or Python. You can hire recent graduates and ask them to learn C++, but I suspect few will want to work on C++ to any large degree. The programmers who know C++ are the more senior folks, programmers with more experience and higher salary expectations. This drives up your costs.

Not all senior folks admit to knowing C++. Some of my colleagues have removed C++ from their resume, because they want to work on projects with different languages. This removes them from the pool of talent, reducing the number of available C++ programmers. Finding programmers is harder and takes longer. This drives up your cost.

This affect is not limited to C++. Other "old tech" suffers the same fate. Think about COBOL, Visual Basic, Windows API programming, the Sybase database, Powerbuilder, and any of a number of older technologies. Each was popular in their heyday; each is still around but with a much-diminished pool of talent.

When technologies become "old", they become expensive. Eventually, they become so expensive that the product must either change to a different technology set or be discontinued.

As a product manager, how do you project your development and maintenance costs? Do you assume a flat cost model (perhaps with modest increases to match inflation)? Or do you project increasing costs as labor becomes scarce? Do you assume that a single technology will last the life of the product, or do you plan for a migration to a new technology?

Technologies become less popular over time. The assumption that a set of unchanging technology will carry a product over its entire life is naive -- unless your product life is shorter than the technology cycle. Effective project managers will plan for change.