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Taking C Seriously

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Re: Taking C Seriously

#11

Post by cygx »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #6
zeteo wrote: post #2

>C was developed between 1969 and 1973, making it nearly 40 years old [...] C ha[s] already made an exceptionally good start on a century-long reign In all fairness, development continued past 1973. Most C programmers today would have some trouble even reading the code from the 1978 first edition of K&R; and the void* pointer, that the author refers to later in the article, was a part of ANSI C (~1990).

Development on C hasn't stopped. C1x is coming soon (probably 2012 or 13), and has a lot of interesting enhancements including bounds checking.

According to Herb Sutter's obit for Dennis Ritchie ( http://herbsutter.com/2011/10/12/dennis-ritchie/ ), C1x already passed its final ballot, so all that's missing is an official announcement.

It would be nice to know if there are any changes from the April draft, though...

Re: Taking C Seriously

#12

Post by Blunt »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #5

I'm confused. Did C stop being taken seriously at some point? C is the only language that you can truly get things done without having to fight the language every step of the way. I can't say the same of... well, any other language I've used in the past 5 years.

agreed. and if you do any sort of embedded work, you must know C and C++. If history is any predictor of the future, chips will continue to get smaller and the "embedded" development world, I think, will proliforate and demand coders to know C and C++ at least for the next several years until fancy tools/compilers argue things like Java and C# code bloat doesn't matter because a 4Gig embedded system will be the norm... ahem..

Re: Taking C Seriously

#13

Post by onan_barbarian »

derleth wrote: post #4

The problem is, nothing in this article even begins to address the actual criticism people have of C, instead saying that it's possible to write good C code and that Java is a memory hog. The first is true, the second is debatable, both as to whether it's the case and whether it matters. For example, read this: http://www.jwz.org/doc/gc.html > In a large application, a good garbage collector is more efficient than ma…

Wow, talk about strawmen:

> for a large, complex application a good GC will be more > efficient than a zillion pieces of hand-tuned, randomly > micro-optimized storage management

vs:

> Note that I said a good garbage collector. Don't blame > the concept of GC just because you've never seen a good > GC that interfaces well with your favorite language.

Ok, so we're comparing 'state of the art GC' to 'zillion pieces of hand-tuned, randomly micro-optimized storage management'. Astoundingly, we come to the conclusion that GC Is Awesome and MOAR Efficient.

Re: Taking C Seriously

#14

Post by qdog »

derleth wrote: post #4

The problem is, nothing in this article even begins to address the actual criticism people have of C, instead saying that it's possible to write good C code and that Java is a memory hog. The first is true, the second is debatable, both as to whether it's the case and whether it matters. For example, read this: http://www.jwz.org/doc/gc.html > In a large application, a good garbage collector is more efficient than ma…

JWZ also states "Java and Emacs are really bad examples of GC-oriented environments." in that same article.

And later, in 2000, he states "Today, I program in C." http://www.jwz.org/doc/java.html

JWZ is an entertaining read, but unless he's updated in a post somewhere in the last 11 years, it isn't clear to me where he comes down on C at the moment.

Btw, I program in C.

Re: Taking C Seriously

#15

Post by mbq »

derleth wrote: post #4

The problem is, nothing in this article even begins to address the actual criticism people have of C, instead saying that it's possible to write good C code and that Java is a memory hog. The first is true, the second is debatable, both as to whether it's the case and whether it matters. For example, read this: http://www.jwz.org/doc/gc.html > In a large application, a good garbage collector is more efficient than ma…

Zawinski's point is true iff "large application" means an application which allocates and frees plethora of tiny chunks -- however I will argue that this is not a necessity, rather a style coming from a try to port scripting experience to lower-level languages to speed up development. Probably in most cases this is not a problem (no one will notice 100us speedup in GUI), but if one starts to tweak GC or new to rescue efficiency or argue which is better, it is certainly better idea just to write it in C, with all those ugly buffers and pointers. If you already have to track memory use in your mind, why not to just take control of it?

Re: Taking C Seriously

#16

Post by pjscott »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #13
derleth wrote: post #4

The problem is, nothing in this article even begins to address the actual criticism people have of C, instead saying that it's possible to write good C code and that Java is a memory hog. The first is true, the second is debatable, both as to whether it's the case and whether it matters. For example, read this: http://www.jwz.org/doc/gc.html > In a large application, a good garbage collector is more efficient than ma…

Wow, talk about strawmen: > for a large, complex application a good GC will be more > efficient than a zillion pieces of hand-tuned, randomly > micro-optimized storage management vs: > Note that I said a good garbage collector. Don't blame > the concept of GC just because you've never seen a good > GC that interfaces well with your favorite language. Ok, so we're comparing 'state of the art GC' to 'zillion pieces of…

In other words, he's comparing what we're likely to get with a large C project and what we're likely to get in a modern garbage-collected environment. I don't think he's claiming more than that; where's the problem?

Re: Taking C Seriously

#17

Post by cageface »

Pure C seems to be enjoying a bit of language fad hipness lately but I don't know anybody that has to maintain a large body of non-trivial, low-level code that chooses pure C over C++. There's a good reason that everything from Solaris to V8 to Photoshop to Quake is written in C++ and not C.

That C is still in wide use after 40 years is a testament to the elegance of its original design but let's not get carried away.

Re: Taking C Seriously

#18

Post by lgeek »

cageface wrote: post #17

Pure C seems to be enjoying a bit of language fad hipness lately but I don't know anybody that has to maintain a large body of non-trivial, low-level code that chooses pure C over C++. There's a good reason that everything from Solaris to V8 to Photoshop to Quake is written in C++ and not C. That C is still in wide use after 40 years is a testament to the elegance of its original design but let's not get carried away…

>I don't know anybody that has to maintain a large body of non-trivial, low-level code that chooses pure C over C++. There's a good reason that everything from Solaris to V8 to Photoshop to Quake is written in C++ and not C.

How about the Linux kernel?

Re: Taking C Seriously

#19

Post by pvarangot »

cageface wrote: post #17

Pure C seems to be enjoying a bit of language fad hipness lately but I don't know anybody that has to maintain a large body of non-trivial, low-level code that chooses pure C over C++. There's a good reason that everything from Solaris to V8 to Photoshop to Quake is written in C++ and not C. That C is still in wide use after 40 years is a testament to the elegance of its original design but let's not get carried away…

The Linux kernel, Subversion and PHP are pure C. And don't get me started on the BSDs or binutils... ld and libbfd are pure C and its C++ replacement (gold) is still not widely used.

And this came without thinking about it... surely in two more minutes or by going to ohloh I could fire a couple more large bodies of non-trivial low-level C code at you.

Re: Taking C Seriously

#20

Post by AceJohnny2 »

cageface wrote: post #17

Pure C seems to be enjoying a bit of language fad hipness lately but I don't know anybody that has to maintain a large body of non-trivial, low-level code that chooses pure C over C++. There's a good reason that everything from Solaris to V8 to Photoshop to Quake is written in C++ and not C. That C is still in wide use after 40 years is a testament to the elegance of its original design but let's not get carried away…

Hi, I'd like to chime in as an embedded sw dev. We're still there, designing your equipment, coding quietly and happily in C... :)
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