I'll prefix this by saying that I know there are certain uses for these languages which keeps them relevant to a small fraction of the developer community. Most notably operating system, device driver, compiler, etc, developers. I'll also say that I'm not trying to start a flame war against any language, technology, or person.

I'm wondering if languages like C and C++ are still relevant for the majority of developers. I personally don't think so. In the day of 3ghz machines with gigabytes of memory available, the speed argument for C is losing it's merit. That has been the primary argument for a few decades now. With time, it only gets further and further from relevancy. The other major factor I see is the development life cycle for a C application versus .NET or Java. Given the feature rich frameworks provided by these platforms, the time it takes to build a sophisticated application is far shorter than a C equivalent. The C equivalent may run a fraction faster, but took twice as long to build and debug. Considering the shelf life of applications in the enterprise these days, that can lead to problems down the road.

All of that aside, it's easy to see that these technologies have their own applications. It will be a cold day in Redmond when Windows is a (near) completely managed environment. By the same token, I'd pass out if my next major project at work was slated for using C in it's development. Of course I'm building business applications where speed is important but not the number one concern.

What do you all think? I know my surroundings, so I'm expecting some "yes" answers to this question. Which is exactly why I'm posting it here. I want to hear what everyone has to say.