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The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

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11–20 of 110 posts

Re: The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

#11
post #2

So while C may be as lightweight as it can get, it's not really suitable for projects with more than 10k LOC. I believe John Carmack would have something to say about this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3

If you want to put forth the requirement that you and everyone else on your team must be as good as John Carmack, sure.

Do you honestly think everyone on the team that developed the id Tech 3 engine was as 'good as Carmack'? I don't think he wrote the whole engine by himself.

Re: The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

#12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the linux kernel more than 10k lines of code, too? And GIMP?

And numerous compilers and interpeters and other system-level software. The author might be talking about consumer-oriented software, but still saying that C isn't suitable for large codebases is very presumptuous . disingenuous was the wrong word

Or ignorant.

Re: The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

#13
post #2

So while C may be as lightweight as it can get, it's not really suitable for projects with more than 10k LOC. I believe John Carmack would have something to say about this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3

C NOT GOOD FOR LARGE PROJECTS?

          MAKE QUAKE-C
Though for Doom3 and on, they did switch to C++, which makes absolutely minimal usage of the language features, heh. I guess old habits die hard.

Re: The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

#14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to put forth the requirement that you and everyone else on your team must be as good as John Carmack, sure.

Do you honestly think everyone on the team that developed the id Tech 3 engine was as 'good as Carmack'? I don't think he wrote the whole engine by himself.

There was one other programmer who worked with Carmack on Quake 3, John Cash.

My point is, even having one Carmack level developer on a team is a bridge to far for most.

Yes, you can write huge projects using just C, but you honestly don't think most people would recommend it unless every little drop of performance was really that important or you had no other choice or you had a super guru with an amazing track record writing the software.

At the time Q3 was written (13 years ago), console games were still being written in assembly language.

Re: The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

#15
If C isn't suitable for projects with more than 10K lines, then praytell, what language should my kernel be written in?

I've been meaning to try Go for a while (the fast compile times alone intrigued me), but this type of post really just puts me off - if you're telling me that C isn't suitable for large projects, then that tells me you may not know C well enough to make that judgement.

Re: The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

#16
post #8
post #2

So while C may be as lightweight as it can get, it's not really suitable for projects with more than 10k LOC. I believe John Carmack would have something to say about this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3

For that matter, libc is considerably more than 10 kLOC (on FreeBSD 9.0, it's about 140 kLOC), and it's hard to think of a more stereotypical block of C code than that.

It is stereotypical library but not stereotypical software project per se. Functions in libc have (by design) very strict interface and little data interdependency.

I would say SQL or HTTP server or game or a word processor where you have to retain sizable chunks of data in memory for longer periods is a better example of big C project. And that's where lack of automatic memory management and data abstraction in C makes it hard.

Re: The Go Programming Language, or: Why all C-like languages except one suck.

#18
post #2

So while C may be as lightweight as it can get, it's not really suitable for projects with more than 10k LOC. I believe John Carmack would have something to say about this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3

My own project (FLINT) is about 120k lines, and we're still going with C. I did spend a lot of time looking for a theoretical higher level language which could take us further when C ran out of puff, but we eventually decided to stick with C for the main project.

However, I did eventually spot Julia, which is totally awesome for my own personal higher level needs.

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