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Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

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Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#111

Post by iainmerrick »

pcwalton wrote: post #7

This is another article overanalyzing the success of C, when in fact the reason for the success of C is very simple and obvious: Unix was free and in a lucky position in 1973; Unix got popular; C is the language of Unix; therefore C got popular. There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. And these kinds of articles always ignore the fac…

There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited.

I happen to like C and think it has a lot going for it, but you're definitely right about this. The original Mac OS was written in Pascal (and assembly), not C. And Turbo Pascal was deservedly popular for a good while. In an alternate universe, Pascal rather than C could be the incumbent legacy systems language.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#112

Post by WalterBright »

pcwalton wrote: post #7

This is another article overanalyzing the success of C, when in fact the reason for the success of C is very simple and obvious: Unix was free and in a lucky position in 1973; Unix got popular; C is the language of Unix; therefore C got popular. There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. And these kinds of articles always ignore the fac…

C got popular because it turned out to be ideally suited for DOS, which was by far the dominant target for programmers for over a decade.

For example, C could deal with near/far pointers. No other language could. Early C implementations were also usable on DOS, early [other language] implementations were unbelievable unusable, and believe me I tried.

There were many diverse, usable, and cheap C implementations available.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#113

Post by bsder »

jasode wrote: post #5

This is a long paper and the author has 2 main claims: 1) C Language popularity is more to do with cognitive ease of memory addresses as a conceptual model for inspection and change. Author claims memory address mental model overshadows runtime performance . 2) switching to "safe" languages like Java/C#/Rust is not necessary. With no changes/violations to existing C Language specification, a new/different implementat…

C's popularity is due to the fact that it is predictable within certain bounds (single thread or limited concurrency).

No GC pauses, no weird runtime crashes due to a strange constructor, no gigantic exception chains, etc.

The only languages in the TIOBE index that can even try to make that claim are: C at #2, C++(if you subset it) at #3, Objective-C/Swift(#18/#11), Assembly at #14, Ada at #29, and maybe FORTRAN(#35).

That's not a lot of options if you need runtime predictability. Basically C, C(with additions), C(with additions), assembly(hack, spit), Ada (okay), and FORTRAN (God help you).

Even now, that means C or Ada--and the first free Ada compiler was 1992.

Yes, Rust is coming. But it's got a way to go yet.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#114

Post by WalterBright »

iainmerrick wrote: post #111
pcwalton wrote: post #7

This is another article overanalyzing the success of C, when in fact the reason for the success of C is very simple and obvious: Unix was free and in a lucky position in 1973; Unix got popular; C is the language of Unix; therefore C got popular. There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. And these kinds of articles always ignore the fac…

There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. I happen to like C and think it has a lot going for it, but you're definitely right about this. The original Mac OS was written in Pascal (and assembly), not C. And Turbo Pascal was deservedly popular for a good while. In an alternate universe, Pascal rather than C could be the incumbent legacy…

Pascal suffered because its standard was woefully incomplete, and every implementation added mutually incompatible proprietary extensions. Turbo Pascal and all the TP developed code died when DOS died.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#115

Post by burntsushi »

Const-me wrote: post #106
burntsushi wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use an Rc? If you can't afford the reference count, then use unsafe/raw pointers, which it sounds like you'd do in C++ anyway.

> then use unsafe/raw pointers Even if I manage to extract an unsafe pointer from that Rust collection, I don’t know for how long will it work. For C++ collections, iterator invalidation rules tell me that.

You'd have to box your values. And if you didn't want to do that, then I'd just used the indexing method mentioned elsewhere in this thread. I've used such things in performance critical code.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#116

Post by Const-me »

pcwalton wrote: post #80
Const-me wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They may not be "sane" in your view because they're different from the way you implement them in C++ I saw two kinds of Rust graphs. One is safe, easy to understand, but slow (e.g. reference counting). Another one (unsafe Rust) is very hard to implement, thousands lines of code. Also, modern C++ is much safer than unsafe rust. > C++ has no protection against the most pernicious memory management errors, particularl…

There is another kind of Rust graph that uses indices. Indices are just bounds checked addresses, so this is a natural fit. The most popular graph crate, petgraph, is of this type. > CRT debug heap / MALLOC_CHECK_ / libefence, depending on the platform/compiler None of these are effective at preventing use after free problems in production.

There’s another problem with arrays: they can’t be too large.

First reason is address space fragmentation, esp. on 32-bit platforms.

Second reason is insert time can be very high. Sure, the average is usually amortized using exponential growth. The worst case however is horrible, you copy 1GB RAM just to insert another 16-byte item.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#117

Post by iainmerrick »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23
pcwalton wrote: post #7

This is another article overanalyzing the success of C, when in fact the reason for the success of C is very simple and obvious: Unix was free and in a lucky position in 1973; Unix got popular; C is the language of Unix; therefore C got popular. There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. And these kinds of articles always ignore the fac…

I've used both C and Pascal in embedded systems. Pascal is painful compared to C. A "somewhat modified" version might help, but I doubt it would be enough. To steal a phrase from my friend Michael Pavlinch: Pascal was like picking your nose with boxing gloves on. A modified boxing glove isn't really going to solve the problem. For that matter, once we weren't on Unix but rather on the PC, and we had a nicely-modified…

I never liked Pascal and I love C, but Bill Atkinson did amazing things with Pascal (see for example https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Hungarian.txt) so it must have something going for it.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#118

Post by WalterBright »

pcwalton wrote: post #39
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used both C and Pascal in embedded systems. Pascal is painful compared to C. A "somewhat modified" version might help, but I doubt it would be enough. To steal a phrase from my friend Michael Pavlinch: Pascal was like picking your nose with boxing gloves on. A modified boxing glove isn't really going to solve the problem. For that matter, once we weren't on Unix but rather on the PC, and we had a nicely-modified…

> For that matter, once we weren't on Unix but rather on the PC, and we had a nicely-modified Pascal (Turbo Pascal), why did C/C++ win there, too? Turbo Pascal was quite successful in its day. But Microsoft chose C, and the rest is history. Absent Microsoft's decision, Pascal might still be around. If you look at early Mac development, for instance, Pascal was actually preferred. C only ended up winning due to being…

> But Microsoft chose C

Ironically, the early Windows API used Pascal calling conventions.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#119

Post by iainmerrick »

nly wrote: post #41
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used both C and Pascal in embedded systems. Pascal is painful compared to C. A "somewhat modified" version might help, but I doubt it would be enough. To steal a phrase from my friend Michael Pavlinch: Pascal was like picking your nose with boxing gloves on. A modified boxing glove isn't really going to solve the problem. For that matter, once we weren't on Unix but rather on the PC, and we had a nicely-modified…

> why did C/C++ win there, too? Maybe C because of its legacy an ubiquity, and C++ because it was one of the few languages with 1) serious compatibility with C, 2) good featureset, and 3) became an ISO standard

Maybe C because of its legacy an ubiquity

Not in the 80s.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#120

Post by jmull »

iainmerrick wrote: post #111
pcwalton wrote: post #7

This is another article overanalyzing the success of C, when in fact the reason for the success of C is very simple and obvious: Unix was free and in a lucky position in 1973; Unix got popular; C is the language of Unix; therefore C got popular. There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. And these kinds of articles always ignore the fac…

There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. I happen to like C and think it has a lot going for it, but you're definitely right about this. The original Mac OS was written in Pascal (and assembly), not C. And Turbo Pascal was deservedly popular for a good while. In an alternate universe, Pascal rather than C could be the incumbent legacy…

You have to wonder, though, why the enduring big dogs of OSs are written in C.

Classic Mac OS was written in Pascal, but it had to be scrapped and replaced.

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