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

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#91

Post by beat » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

lostgame wrote: post #57

beat wrote: post #2

All programming conferences are C conferences, if you think about it.

What on earth are you talking about? Assembly. Java. Ruby. Python. The list goes on. Could you explain your rationale behind this statement?

Point me to a compiler or interpreter, any of them, that isn't either written in C or written in something that was written in C. And of course, whatever you play with, it's running on an operating system written in C.

If programming is turtles all the way down, C is the bottom turtle, standing on the solid ground of Von Neumann architecture.

The point is, C is utterly pervasive. Everything that we think is different from C is made from C.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#92

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

phoe-krk wrote: post #87

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

CLOC tells me there's 28391 lines of C and 426525 lines of Lisp in there. Also remember that Lisp has, on average, higher code density than C thanks to advanced macro usage. Pointing to C code in that repository and saying SBCL is implemented in C is like pointing to https://github.com/sbcl/sbcl/blob/master/binary-distribution... and saying that SBCL is implemented in Bash.

The runtime is written in C. That's the important bit. Just because the compiler, standard library, etc, isn't - doesn't mean it's not based on C. You cannot use SBCL without a C compiler.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#93

Post by nineteen999 » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:51 PM UTC

lostgame wrote: post #57

beat wrote: post #2

All programming conferences are C conferences, if you think about it.

What on earth are you talking about? Assembly. Java. Ruby. Python. The list goes on. Could you explain your rationale behind this statement?

I think the point that he is making is that most popular modern implementations of assemblers, Java compilers/JVM's, Ruby and Python interpreters are written in C, or in a language which itself was bootstrapped from C, eg. C++.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#94

Post by ngngngng » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:53 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.

Lets be honest: lunch exists to waste time. Nothing productive gets done at lunch and best thing you can take out from them is to socialize with like-minded people.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#95

Post by detaro » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:54 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #2

All programming conferences are C conferences, if you think about it.

In the same sense that all book fairs are forestry expos.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#96

Post by beat » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

kardos wrote: post #90

lostgame wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What on earth are you talking about? Assembly. Java. Ruby. Python. The list goes on. Could you explain your rationale behind this statement?

I guess the point is that the other languages are based on C. From your list CPython, CRuby and the GNU assembler are written in C. Not sure about Java. Edit: not necessarily agreeing, there must be some languages that do not rely on C.

Java runs on the JVM, which is probably written in C++ (which is C, when you start digging). The widely-used Eclipse J9 JVM is written in C++.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#97

Post by twblalock » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

johan_larson wrote: post #52

Are there many new projects being started these days in C, or even C++? I would expect most of that to have moved over to Java or Golang, with most C-family coding being on extensions of older projects.

Embedded software, firmware, low-level OS components like drivers and kernels, game engines, key-value stores, databases, and the compilers/interpreters for a lot of other languages.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#98

Post by robocat » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

dilyevsky wrote: post #46

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.

> But yeah nobody writes code at conferences

steveklabnik in another comment: "A ton of open source project work gets done at conferences".

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#99

Post by beat » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:57 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #95

beat wrote: post #2

All programming conferences are C conferences, if you think about it.

In the same sense that all book fairs are forestry expos.

And you know someone is gonna come along and explain that LISP books are written only on tinfoil, so you're completely wrong.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#100

Post by maxxxxx » Wed, Nov 21, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #19

Because though there might be building trades conferences, there are no hammer conferences. Oh, there will be tool vendors at the building trades conferences, there might be sessions on "Efficient Hammering Techniques Using Machine Learning", but there are no conferences about hammers. Don't forget about the blacksmith conference next week, they'll have hammer vendors, too. I dunno, a Ruby conference kinda makes sens…

Exactly. C programmers don't define themselves as C programmers mainly. They are firmware developers, game developers or something else. That's where their real interest is.