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C meeting is over. C23 added:

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Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#311

Post by vntok »

pjmlp wrote: post #165
pkrumins wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the standards people care about standards. We (programmers) want to just get things done. We don't care about the standards. No one reads the standards. Also no one cares about portability. All computers have been the same for the last 20 years.

Right, then comes the day another OS or CPU needs to be supported and some clever developers learn their lesson about language standards during a couple of late nights tracking down production issues.

Seems way more efficient to not care about standards and invest a couple late nights once every five years.

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#312

Post by nec4b »

potiuper wrote: post #304
nec4b wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A simple c library: https://github.com/projectNe10/Ne10 You have not yet shown an argument for why c is not a portable assembly.

Access to CPU-specific flags like the carry flag. When doing a multiple-precision addition, if the CPU carry bit is inaccessible, then it must instead be compared to the result to see if it overflowed, which takes 3-5 more instructions per limb or worse on modern superscalar processors that are serial in terms of data accesses.

Portable by definition means it cannot capture every specific detail of every architecture out there.

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#313

Post by pjmlp »

jstimpfle wrote: post #287
pjmlp wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of compilers... right. If you cannot compile GCC with a C compiler, it isn't C.

Trying to win a pointless argument based on pedantic logic that misses the point.

Usually the typical answer when facts aren't appealing, the other way around apparently being pedantic matters.

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#314

Post by pjmlp »

uecker wrote: post #246
pjmlp wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of compilers... right. If you cannot compile GCC with a C compiler, it isn't C.

There a couple of open source C compilers TCC, SDCC, tendra, chibicc, ACK, LCC, PCC, etc. and also many commercial ones. It is true that GCC is not written in C anymore, but it is easy to see that the code is still relatively close. I am also myself writing a C compiler in C at the moment and there is no problem at all.

How many of those are actually shipping software into production?

Quite curious about which commercial C compilers, written in C, are being sold, keeping those companies in business.

Every year thousands of CS students write toy C compilers.

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#315

Post by pjmlp »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #270
pjmlp wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can start by C compilers nowadays written in C++, Arduino, AUTOSAR security standard, CUDA, DirectX, Metal, GoDot, Vulkan helper libs, SYSCL, ...

Those are just headlines, is there any evidence that those are actually overtaking C, and that the C++ used isn't just "C style C++"?

Doesn't matter, if the code doesn't compile on a C compiler, it is C++.

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#316

Post by pjmlp »

zabzonk wrote: post #243
pjmlp wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful to whom? To you or the companies that keep Eiffel Software in business for 30 years?

> the companies that keep Eiffel Software in business for 30 years? Such as? If you can't provide links to people using Eiffel succefuly, then maybe there are none.

I can provide them, but you apparently will ignore them anyway, because it is clear a company can exist for 30 years without money.

Here is one, just to keep you happy.

https://washingtontechnology.com/2003/06/tech-success-xontec...

Yes, the article is from 2003, then again you haven't asked for dates, but to make it easier on you, you can ask them how they feel about Eiffel in 2022.

https://www.xontech.md/en/

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#317

Post by pjmlp »

int_19h wrote: post #307
pjmlp wrote: post #153

Finally C catches up with Algol 60 boolean types, it only took 60 years. Maybe in another 60 it will get proper strings and arrays.

C has had a true Boolean type for over 20 years now, since C99. This time around they're merely dumping the backwards-compatible _Bool/_True/_False syntax + keyword-like #defines in , and replacing it all with proper keywords. That said, it would be nice if C caught up with Algol 68 , seeing how that's the one many of the concepts (and the corresponding keywords) are taken from. Let's start with first-class functions…

That was a kludge.

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#318

Post by nec4b »

int_19h wrote: post #308
nec4b wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you on C being popular because of UNIX. I do disagree if you believe this is the only reason why it still enjoys popularity. And you are selling the UNIX authors short if you think they chose C just for the fun of it.

The UNIX authors didn't choose C; they made it, specifically to make UNIX. And, much like the original UNIX itself, it was a hack - because they were trying to make do within the limits of their hardware. So, some of the syntax is the way it is because it was simpler to parse, for example. And some of the semantics was originally "because PDP does that". As for why C has staying power, that's solely a function of its…

You're hung up on words. I know they made it. It was based of Ken Thomson's B. They chose it, when they could have taken some other existing language. I see great beauty and simplicity in C the same way I see it e.g. in Lisp or Javascript for that matter. I dabbled in Modula-2 and it does not offer the same feeling in my opinion. The core features of C are very powerful and simple at the same time, which is the reason it stayed popular. People writing low level code understand that.

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#319

Post by pjmlp »

deeviant wrote: post #302
pjmlp wrote: post #153

Finally C catches up with Algol 60 boolean types, it only took 60 years. Maybe in another 60 it will get proper strings and arrays.

I mean, C++ doesn't have "proper" strings, so I wouldn't wait up for C getting them.

I see them on the ISO C++ standard document, maybe your copy is missing pages.

Re: C meeting is over. C23 added:

#320

Post by pjmlp »

tialaramex wrote: post #272
pjmlp wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I claim it yet again on this very comment. Without UNIX spreading with its free beer into universities, C would have been a footnote on the history of system programming languages.

Much more importantly, without UNIX and free beer TCP/IP there's a fair chance the Internet isn't the Network and none of this (gestures at HN and the Web) happens. That's a much bigger impact than C which is just a programming language, even if you count the influence of NUL-terminated strings, and all the semi-colon languages (including even Javascript and Rust, which are very different from C but preserve the enth…

So? I could deal with such alternative universe, after all, between 1986 and 1994, I managed to work with computers and networking just fine.
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