>>14358153You have to be really good at HPC programming. C++ is simply the preferred language, because it's just C, with its zero cost abstractions and closeness to the metal, without all the shitty K&R parts to it (and all the tooling built around it). Java has better tooling, and there are more developers for it, but someone that knows what they're doing (and has the autism to stay focused) with C++ will always be more in demand, and make more moola.
Unless you're legitimately autistic, on amphetamines, or have the fortitude and resolve of a monk to chase obscene amounts of money doing really difficult work, then you're gonna get filtered. You will absolutely hate using the language, if you're ever in a high-performance environment, where you gotta get this shit down last month. If you're in a research/collegiate type firm, then yeah you can make a lot of money doing research and doing what you like (but good luck breaking in without a track record, or getting recruited through OCR).