50 years of C, the good, the bad and the ugly [video]

Post by elcritch » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 12:44 AM UTC

AndyKelley wrote: post #179

elcritch wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'd count Zig as having more of an "open ended" type system / philosophy. Though, it looks like Zig doesn't do function overloading either [1]. That's a disappointment. So you end up with `array_count`, `map_count`, etc instead of just `count`. In my way of thinking that's more work reduces readability. It's one of the paint points of C vs C++ to need `array_list_count` and `hash_map_add` instead of just saying `…

One of the main drawbacks of function overloading is that it can make code harder to read and understand. When the same function name is used for multiple different purposes, it is confusing for developers who are reading the code. This makes it more difficult to maintain and modify the code in the future, as developers spend extra time trying to understand the various function definitions and how they are being used…

Post by Emigre_ » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 1:28 AM UTC

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #137

antirez wrote: post #41

A different take on the matter: I write code mainly artistically, and I found that C is one of the best languages available to code as a form of art. It allows to be both brutal and honest, or abstract and deceiving. Not many languages are so semantically powerful.

What are your goto sources of knowledge for C? I’m learning it to write embedded stuff and so far it’s mainly the k&r book, one from no starch press, and a udemy course. Thanks!

Post by kazinator » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 4:22 AM UTC

AlexeyBrin wrote: post #60

siftrics wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This shouldn't be downvoted. C++ is a superset of C; it must be capable of being at least as "brutal and honest" and "abstract and deceiving" as C. I would argue that C++ can be dramatically more deceiving than C --- see inheritance and operator overloading, just to name two.

C++ is not a superset of C, there are plenty of legal C constructs that will trigger errors when compiled with a C++ compiler.

Post by kazinator » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 5:01 AM UTC

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #186

asveikau wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of interesting C works out there, as well as data structures or algorithms that C can express elegantly. Small example, linked lists. I don't think non-C linked list code tends to be as straightforward as I've seen in C. Or the character-at-a-time style of string processing. It's kind of unique to C. You can say there is stuff about that you don't like. That's fine. Linked lists suck with modern CPU…

I am extremely familiar with C. I used to work on a static analyser for it. The issue is that there is very little to like in how C is designed from a PL point of view. You are confusing what the language can do and what is semantic is. C strings are just a contiguous allocation of byte and a bunch of functions which interprets it as ascii characters and stop on a specific value. That’s literally the worst representa…

   const char *my_strchr(const char *str, int ch)
   {
     if (*str == 0)
       return NULL;
     if (*str == ch)
       return str;
     return my_strchr(str + 1);
   }

Post by antoniuschan99 » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 5:51 AM UTC

Emigre_ wrote: post #193

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your goto sources of knowledge for C? I’m learning it to write embedded stuff and so far it’s mainly the k&r book, one from no starch press, and a udemy course. Thanks!

I think you’ll like Fluent C: Principles, Practices, and Patterns by Christopher Preschern (O’Reilly, 2022). The books you have are excellent ways to learn the language, and this one complements them in that it lists common practices around, for example, error handling, and other common topics. It shows different approaches and mentions practices from real-world open-source C projects that follow them. It seems like…