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Why Aren't There C Conferences?

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Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#351

Post by mjlee »

simias wrote: post #214
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…

I agree. I'm mostly a C coder but I've been on the Rust train since pretty early and I remember being pretty confused when they started putting emphasis on the Rust branding with logos, the whole "rustacean" thing, conferences, forums etc... In hindsight I get it but originally there was a bit of a culture shock. I mean I don't wear C T-shirts and as far as I can tell there's not really a standard C logo either. Mayb…

JetBrains got there already! https://www.jetbrains.com/clion/

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#352

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

Delmania wrote: post #305
spydum wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow so if you visited that site with no contextual understanding, you would arrive and leave with literally no additional knowledge of what the heck it was! How fantastic!

Seems obvious it’s a metal festival in the U.K. As for who HRH no clue.

Really? I was already aware of Hammerfest but the text on the homepage makes it sound like something out of Lord Of The Rings!

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#353

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

userbinator wrote: post #300

I agree with his reasons for the lack of C conferences, and present one more: what I've noticed from the C developers and "community" (if there is even something to be called that) is a relative lack of dogmatic cargo-cult thinking and otherwise trend-chasing compared to other language communities, which I hypothesise is partly responsible for the "we must have a conference" attitude. To repurpose a phrase, "the choi…

All reasons why C has been around for a very long time and will be around for a very long time to come.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#354

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

TripleCrown wrote: post #331
marcosdumay wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it was in jest. The result of "true --version" is actually quite extent, bringing licensing and authorship information and a short explanation of the GPL.

Just a reminder, this is Hacker News. Having a sense of humor is against the community guidelines.

You created a new account just to say this?

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#355

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

baby wrote: post #257
dman wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately not everyone makes technical decisions using the wisdom of crowds.

If people would switch to Rust and stop writing C the world would probably be a safer place yes.

It's possible to write unsafe code in any language.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#356

Post by dTal »

simias wrote: post #214
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…

I agree. I'm mostly a C coder but I've been on the Rust train since pretty early and I remember being pretty confused when they started putting emphasis on the Rust branding with logos, the whole "rustacean" thing, conferences, forums etc... In hindsight I get it but originally there was a bit of a culture shock. I mean I don't wear C T-shirts and as far as I can tell there's not really a standard C logo either. Mayb…

"C-monkey"

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#357

Post by MrXOR »

Yes, We need C conferences to make C great again!

>>> Why Aren't There C Conferences? Because K&R book is all we need?

"No, don't think I'll need anything at all. All in all they (Go, Zig, Rust, ...) are all just bricks in the wall" --- Pink Floyd

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#358

Post by pluma »

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…

I've been to JSConf EU a couple of times and it's certainly not a JavaScript conference "about building web sites".

Aside from the non-technical talks there were talks like

* how concurrency works in modern JS engines

* a talk about the upcoming BigInt type

* how fingerprinting attacks can circumvent privacy measures

* HTTP/2 Push

* a look at upcoming language proposals

* a retrospective on the JS build tool for React Native

* a talk about versioning

* experimental time travel debugging support in Firefox

* a talk about error handling

* a talk about module systems in JS

Etc etc.

Sure, many talks are either about general web technologies or about new APIs of the web platform, but there is usually also significantly overlap with backend or native mobile and IOT.

When I worked with Python I also went to meetups and followed conferences which always had a wide range of talks from web frameworks to automation, data science and system administration.

Likewise at a Ruby conference I'd also expect talks about tools like Chef or Puppet, which are only tangentially related to web development specifically.

So I don't think your portrayal of conferences is fair at all. "Why aren't there ${language} conferences?" seems like a very sound question, even if ${language} is used in a wide range of industries for very different purposes.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#359

Post by chestervonwinch »

Oreb wrote: post #327
SiVal wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To find the answer, I would ask, Why are there conferences for other technologies? What are they for? And I think the answer is probably 1) get useful news about recent and upcoming changes and 2) to socialize. I'm going to guess--possibly just projecting--that most C developers are older and not terribly interested in meeting new "C friends" or jumping into some hot, new "C startup". That leaves #1. Web/AI-ML/cloud/…

> It’s almost like news about algebra There are plenty of algebra conferences, though. I’ve been to several. :-) I agree with your general point, but algebra isn’t quite as slow-moving as you seem to believe.

C is the tool, so probably a better analogy would have been to pencils, rather than algebra, which is more in line with OP's sentiment regarding hammers.

Re: Why Aren't There C Conferences?

#360

Post by abitoffthetop »

I think the conferences that exist are there to make money, and for vendors to pay to promote their wares. As the platforms such as Java, Python, Javascript, .Net have a focus on tooling the conferences are paid for by the tooling companies and the employers wishing to have their staff associated with the burgeoning tech, ironically with speakers often paid badly just for the exposure, reinforcing the for-profit nature of the conferences.

C/C++ on the other hand would be represented only as an adjunct of a larger industry conference, such as automation , Industry 4.0 or Aerospace and often run by bodies like the IEEEE. There are no large tooling companies for C++, and no-one is making money by creating development tools for a relatively static and stable language, so there's no need to promote it exclusively.

So, the conferences are there, but C++/C exposure is specialised and not profitable to promote.

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