Why Aren't There C Conferences? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#41

Post by aidenn0 » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #18

TheDong wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that follows at all. If you're implying all program languages are derived from C, that's simply false. Lisp is based on the lambda calculus and predates C, as one easy counter-example. If you're implying that all languages run on top of C, that's also false. Theoretical Lisp Machines [0] have been envisioned which do not run C anywhere, and many languages (rust, go, etc) can be built into unikernals t…

Show me a lisp which is used by enough people to fill a conference in 2018 that isn't implemented in C. Show me a lisp machine which was manufactured any time in the past 10 years.

SBCL (a fork of cmucl) is implemented in common lisp and is the most popular common lisp implementation.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#42

Post by quickthrower2 » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

Svoka wrote: post #13

Lets be honest: conferences exist to waste time. Nothing productive gets done on conferences and best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

You've been to the wrong conferences.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#43

Post by EliRivers » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:14 PM UTC

Svoka wrote: post #13

Lets be honest: conferences exist to waste time. Nothing productive gets done on conferences and best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

In theory, I can get from watching the recordings most of the value I get from attending. CPPCon's YouTube channel is excellent.

In practice, I just don't seem to get round to watching them. Going to the conference means watching a whole bunch of them with no distractions. Very useful.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#44

Post by Apocryphon » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

Svoka wrote: post #13

Lets be honest: conferences exist to waste time. Nothing productive gets done on conferences and best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

WWDC is like, the only time Apple deigns to expose their own developers to the wider world to share their inside expertise and answer questions.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#45

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:17 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #41

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me a lisp which is used by enough people to fill a conference in 2018 that isn't implemented in C. Show me a lisp machine which was manufactured any time in the past 10 years.

SBCL (a fork of cmucl) is implemented in common lisp and is the most popular common lisp implementation.

https://github.com/sbcl/sbcl/tree/master/src/runtime

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#46

Post by dilyevsky » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

Svoka wrote: post #13

Lets be honest: conferences exist to waste time. Nothing productive gets done on conferences and best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

If you think that making connections with people working on same things you do is waste of time you’ve got another thing coming. But yeah nobody writes code at conferences, I thought that was pretty obvious.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#47

Post by ddingus » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

Svoka wrote: post #13

Lets be honest: conferences exist to waste time. Nothing productive gets done on conferences and best thing you can take our from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

Oh I don't know about that. I've gotten a lot out of every one I've ever attended.

It is possible to go to one of those in waste a lot of time, and party. For some people that's a once-a-year relief valve nothing wrong with that.

It's also possible to go have a lot of really meaningful, relevant conversations with people that are valuable to you.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#48

Post by giancarlostoro » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #18

TheDong wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that follows at all. If you're implying all program languages are derived from C, that's simply false. Lisp is based on the lambda calculus and predates C, as one easy counter-example. If you're implying that all languages run on top of C, that's also false. Theoretical Lisp Machines [0] have been envisioned which do not run C anywhere, and many languages (rust, go, etc) can be built into unikernals t…

Show me a lisp which is used by enough people to fill a conference in 2018 that isn't implemented in C. Show me a lisp machine which was manufactured any time in the past 10 years.

Well there's Amber I suppose? Not popular, but not in C at least.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9699065

Uses m-expressions instead of s-expressions though.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#49

Post by visualstudio » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

I could see it happening in the future.

There's has been a mini resurgence in C from (normally high level language) programmers who are getting sick of web development and are interested in data oriented design.

Conference benefits could be:

Pushing the C standard. C11 is barely supported.

Discussing new standards in a forum other than mailing lists. Did you guys know there is already a C17 standard?

Letting old C devs pass on their wisdom to new C devs. C has a lot of pitfalls but also has a lot of neat tricks.

Show off new and existing tools.

etc.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#50

Post by mikestew » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:19 PM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #40

mikestew wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the ones you list, only one has a wide focus, IMO. Three of those will essentially be web development conferences, and I don't know what the hell people do with Go these days, but I'll bet it's mostly a handful of things. Python probably has broad enough usage and scope to counter what I said. The exception proves the rule. :-)

Python is probably mostly data science if I had to guess. jupyter notebooks have made python excessively used for data science.

Python is probably mostly data science if I had to guess.

You think? I'll admit that my view of the Python community is super narrow, but I was thinking Django, me writing a bunch of test scripts, backend stuff. I know data science is a "thing" with Python, but I just didn't imagine that it had become it's main use. I guess TIL there's a whole other world of how people use Python, and it might be most of them. :-)