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I looked into the table of contents & jumped into pages of it. It looks like good material on best practices & optimization rules & tips. Quickly, bookmarked it & definitely worth reading. IMO, the title here is misleading, I don't think new feature is added to C to make it modern.
Eh? C11 isn't modern?
It's been a decade or more since I've worked in C (and have never been a heavy C coder). Is "modern C" really a thing? I mean, is there some subset of C that is safer than what I think of when I think of C? I know about stuff like reference counting techniques, rather than manual memory management, for example, and that goes miles towards safer coding. But, even so, the variety of ways you can shoot yourself in the f…
Would anyone choose C for a new systems project with no legacy baggage or dependencies, in a world with Rust and Go? Note that Go does not entirely compete in the same space, and Rust is only starting to gain traction.
I've seen people consider "systems" programming as relating to building web services. Traditionally systems programming would be more kernel level and utilities/daemons.
Rust might be OK to start using for the latter, but its very much not yet where I'd start using it for new things for either of the traditional setup.
I know everyone is gung-ho about rust, but for the traditional systems programming crowd, its very new. Given how much it changes I would NOT want to bet on using it for at least 5 years. You don't switch just because something is better on memory safety. That is a nice to have thing. But changing 40ish years of things isn't something that you do without planning.
Also, in my opinion Rust doesn't go far enough. I'd rather we move to things like Idris where I can prove much more than just memory safety. Rust is basically Ada/Oberon/Modula for the modern age. Nice, but ultimately not the first time this has happened.
It's been a decade or more since I've worked in C (and have never been a heavy C coder). Is "modern C" really a thing? I mean, is there some subset of C that is safer than what I think of when I think of C? I know about stuff like reference counting techniques, rather than manual memory management, for example, and that goes miles towards safer coding. But, even so, the variety of ways you can shoot yourself in the f…
I imagine it is easier to hire C programmers than Rust programmers, at the moment, especially in fields like embedded development.
It's been a decade or more since I've worked in C (and have never been a heavy C coder). Is "modern C" really a thing? I mean, is there some subset of C that is safer than what I think of when I think of C? I know about stuff like reference counting techniques, rather than manual memory management, for example, and that goes miles towards safer coding. But, even so, the variety of ways you can shoot yourself in the f…
Well, I've done C off-and-on, sometimes heavily, since the days of VT-100s and DEC-Writers. Modern C has always been a thing since the 1970's. Its just that the definition of "modern" keeps changing :)
Yes, things are easier. It is possible to use the compiler features to write code that can be compile-time checked better than in the old days. A good IDE can use that to advantage to flag a lot of errors before you even compile. Yes, memory management can be easier. That said, most of the C I do now is for embedded microcontrollers with no OS underneath -- so memory safety and threads are DIY, and fork() is not a thing.
As someone once said to me about 30 years ago, "C doesn't get in your way." Also, with C, I can, if I wish, get extremely fine-grained control over memory layout. So currently I tend to use C on bare metal, and Python 3.5 whenever I can get away with it, with wee, tiny, C extensions to Python where necessary. C still has a place, but since the advent of Python my motto is: "Life is too short for C++".
Any suggestions on what I should apply C to as a way to learn it?
It's been a decade or more since I've worked in C (and have never been a heavy C coder). Is "modern C" really a thing? I mean, is there some subset of C that is safer than what I think of when I think of C? I know about stuff like reference counting techniques, rather than manual memory management, for example, and that goes miles towards safer coding. But, even so, the variety of ways you can shoot yourself in the f…
Would anyone choose C for a new systems project with no legacy baggage or dependencies, in a world with Rust and Go? Note that Go does not entirely compete in the same space, and Rust is only starting to gain traction.
Obviously, if one defines "systems programming" more strictly than that, and only mean code that directly interacts with hardware or has hard realtime requirements (which also probably means it must interact directly with hardware), then Go does not make sense in that category. But, C has given up a lot of territory over the past several decades. When I first started programming, C was the language you used for writing almost any real application...if you weren't using assembly. That has changed a lot in the intervening years, and almost no one would think to use C for GUI apps today, for example.
I've had no luck learning a language on its own. But I've had a lot of luck learning languages as part of something bigger. Like C# via. Unity, Swift via. 2D game dev in XCode. Any suggestions on what I should apply C to as a way to learn it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh? C11 isn't modern?
It is indeed. But its more a polishing of C99 imo. At least annex k is optional now iirc.
While C11 is indeed to some degree a polishing of C99, its theme is multi-threading.
I've had no luck learning a language on its own. But I've had a lot of luck learning languages as part of something bigger. Like C# via. Unity, Swift via. 2D game dev in XCode. Any suggestions on what I should apply C to as a way to learn it?
I've had no luck learning a language on its own. But I've had a lot of luck learning languages as part of something bigger. Like C# via. Unity, Swift via. 2D game dev in XCode. Any suggestions on what I should apply C to as a way to learn it?
If your a fan of the terminal I recommend writing a terminal program that scratches an itch of yours. Perhaps theres a shell script that runs too slowly? Or something in inscrutable awk that would be better as its own program.