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complaint yeah I hear that often when talking about C11 :]
hah! fixed that for you. Who would complain about something as wonderful as C11, outside it not being available for your compiler?
Beats me, but see rest of thread I guess :] In all fairness, sometimes it's the right tool for the job, sometimes it isn't
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Yeah, again and again. it's like blaming a hammer for the potential of breaking your finger when you use it, and proposing the use of a spoon, instead.
This C apologism is holding the industry back. Software development has changed many times over since C came out and it just isn't a good tool for tackling a lot of the issues that we have today. Just about every software project written in C has some serious bugs. I personally judge a language by how well it lets you to define abstractions. In C's case, it doesn't let you do that very well.
Another day for the HN crowd to express their distaste for C :)
On the other hand, where the language gets promoted, I haven't seen anyone really promote C in a way that would sound modern in any sense, where people who have years of experience with C stick with C89 or use C99 in a C++ compatible fashion (i.e. without any C99 syntax which C++ has not adopted officially like restrict keyword or designated initializers). While that is fine for personal preferences, I think it does a disservice to people who have to learn the language and use the language for various justified reasons of their own and there isn't a unified response in how to really teach C to them.
I think the author really hits the hammer on the head with this part in the introduction.
"In contrast to the ubiquitous presence of C programs and systems, good knowledge of and about C is much more scarce. Even experienced C programmers often appear to be stuck in some degree of self-inflicted ignorance about the modern evolution of the C language. A likely reason for this is that C is seen as an "easy to learn" language, allowing a programmer with little experience to quickly write or copy snippets of code that at least appear to do what it’s supposed to. In a way, C fails to motivate its users to climb to higher levels of knowledge."
But on this book, from what I have read from past revisions, it's very well written and I have even learned some things from it I didn't know existed in C, like using the keyword static in array indices in parameter declarations. While it is not a perfect resource and I don't think anyone new to programming would be able to read this without guidance, it does some things extraordinarily well which I haven't really seen other C books touch on. Its treatment of undefined behavior is top notch and the way that it tries to explain the memory model of C is pretty good as well.
But had this book been written for another "antique" language, like Modern Fotran or Modern Cobol (which both had their last ISO standards most recently in 2008 and 2014 respectively, mind you), I doubt there would be this much polarization in the comments section.
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Yeah, again and again. it's like blaming a hammer for the potential of breaking your finger when you use it, and proposing the use of a spoon, instead.
This C apologism is holding the industry back. Software development has changed many times over since C came out and it just isn't a good tool for tackling a lot of the issues that we have today. Just about every software project written in C has some serious bugs. I personally judge a language by how well it lets you to define abstractions. In C's case, it doesn't let you do that very well.
There, fixed it for you. Seriously, vulnerabilities and bugs are found everywhere not just in C.
I've been programming for 35 years, in so many languages I lost count, and every time I've seen the 'let's not use C because it'll lead to bugs' it was to be replaced by another thing that was ALSO leading to bugs, and/or become so bloated it was in itself... a bug.
What alternatives there are for C/C++ if you want to write library that you can call from Python, R, Matlab, Java, Rust, Lua, node.js ... and have good performance? Old ones like Ada and Fortran of course. There are newcomers like Rust and Go. Are their C api's mature and portable?
Rusts C api is completely mature and portable. In fact if you are writing a library that you want to have a C interface to, Rust is a fantastic choice.
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Your criticism lacks constructivity. What do you propose we replace C with?
Depends on what you are writing. C isn't 100 percent replaceable right now but the more people bitch about it and support the alternatives, the better for the future.
I mean, the problem cut C is not that it is old, but that it is dangerous.
Array out of bounds is dangerous even in Excel VB.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This C apologism is holding the industry back. Software development has changed many times over since C came out and it just isn't a good tool for tackling a lot of the issues that we have today. Just about every software project written in C has some serious bugs. I personally judge a language by how well it lets you to define abstractions. In C's case, it doesn't let you do that very well.
"Just about every software project written has some serious bugs" There, fixed it for you. Seriously, vulnerabilities and bugs are found everywhere not just in C. I've been programming for 35 years, in so many languages I lost count, and every time I've seen the 'let's not use C because it'll lead to bugs' it was to be replaced by another thing that was ALSO leading to bugs, and/or become so bloated it was in itself.…
B: "I've been using syringes for 35 years and clean needles won't get rid of HIV entirely".
Well no duh. But that isn't really a counter argument.
> become so bloated it was in itself
Whereas C is the pinnacle of expressiveness?