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C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

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Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#51

Post by pjmlp »

calloc wrote: post #47
pjmlp wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows and Mac OS X are, and they are slowly incorporating such changes, as I mentioned. Don't forget that UNIX was once upon a time a research operating system, and took a few decades to have industry impact. New ideas take time to mature.

Objective-C isn't used in XNU the kernel that Mac OS X uses, Mach is a mixture of C and C++ (A subset of it actually, known as IOKit).

System programming is more than just the kernel.

I imagine that the kernel can easily compiled with the Objective-C or Objective-C++ compiler, if Apple so wishes.

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#52

Post by pjmlp »

pcwalton wrote: post #43
pjmlp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Oberon, Spin, Singularity, Home, Inferno are all operating systems written in GC enabled system programming languages. D and Go are just following that thread. Eventually all mainstream OS will have such type of languages and C will be legacy. Microsoft is already slowly doing that by dropping support for C later than C90, and adding COM based API as the default Windows API. Now mainly for Metro, perhaps for t…

Note that Apple is abandoning garbage collection for Objective-C. Additionally, GC is not strictly necessary to solve buffer overruns and dangling pointers. Region-based memory management is an alternative for many use cases.

Yes, but reference counting (ARC) is also automatic memory management.

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#53

Post by ams6110 »

pjmlp wrote: post #30
antirez wrote: post #12

I didn't checked the details, but I would love to see ten attempts every year, trying to solve the same problem. D and Go are not trying to provide us with a better C, because they don't share the concept of, a language that translates straightforward to assembler, but still is designed so that you can mount good abstractions with it. This is what you need for kernel programming, embedded systems, and a good deal of…

Native Oberon, Spin, Singularity, Home, Inferno are all operating systems written in GC enabled system programming languages. D and Go are just following that thread. Eventually all mainstream OS will have such type of languages and C will be legacy. Microsoft is already slowly doing that by dropping support for C later than C90, and adding COM based API as the default Windows API. Now mainly for Metro, perhaps for t…

Objective-C was not created by Apple.

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#54

Post by chwahoo »

antirez wrote: post #12

I didn't checked the details, but I would love to see ten attempts every year, trying to solve the same problem. D and Go are not trying to provide us with a better C, because they don't share the concept of, a language that translates straightforward to assembler, but still is designed so that you can mount good abstractions with it. This is what you need for kernel programming, embedded systems, and a good deal of…

> I bet this better C will arise in a few years at max, and it is not going to come from academia.

I take this statement to mean: Academia is failing us by not providing us with the next generation C. If that was the intent, I think it's not a fair jab.

Academia IS actively investigating low-level languages: ATS, Cyclone, and typed assembly are all examples. But, it's not academia's job to create widely-used languages and tools. Sometimes they do create something that achieves wide use, but that's mostly a side benefit. Their job is to generate and evaluate useful "idea nuggets" that can inform future system builders and to train students to do novel systematic research.

There seems to be a common meme that academic CS is "out of touch" with what real developers need. I think it's mostly unfair: while the world always needs a slightly better web framework, compiler, language, etc., that's not the goal of academic CS; they aim to fertilize the ground with ideas that facilitate the growth of more big and small ideas.

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#55

Post by jksmith »

dragonbonheur wrote: post #23
kibwen wrote: post #3

I think that languages that are a just thin shell on top of C (as opposed to languages that merely target C, e.g. Chicken Scheme) might have some potential. I'll call this coffeescriptification --still eagerly awaiting the first transpiled language that does nothing but remove C's braces and semicolons. If someone doesn't do it by next April Fools, I certainly will (I already have the name in mind: Glee (the italics…

Funny how everyone wants to program in BASIC but doesn't want to admit it. Like the Python and Lua guys. Try FreeBASIC, it's a compiler.

Haha! Or insert Pascal in there and try out some FreePascal, the perennial number 5 to 8 on most the alioth shootouts for the past 20 years.

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#56

Post by antirez »

chwahoo wrote: post #54
antirez wrote: post #12

I didn't checked the details, but I would love to see ten attempts every year, trying to solve the same problem. D and Go are not trying to provide us with a better C, because they don't share the concept of, a language that translates straightforward to assembler, but still is designed so that you can mount good abstractions with it. This is what you need for kernel programming, embedded systems, and a good deal of…

> I bet this better C will arise in a few years at max, and it is not going to come from academia. I take this statement to mean: Academia is failing us by not providing us with the next generation C. If that was the intent, I think it's not a fair jab. Academia IS actively investigating low-level languages: ATS, Cyclone, and typed assembly are all examples. But, it's not academia's job to create widely-used language…

> I take this statement to mean: Academia is failing us by not providing us with the next generation C. If that was the intent, I think it's not a fair jab.

I don't want to say that academia is failing or should responsible of giving us this "better C", just where I guess we should look to see "new C" coming is not there. However I think that academia may have a role in this matter, that is, to study the interaction between the programmer and the programming language about getting things done. This is probably done (but I can't remember famous recent studies about this) and could provide useful hints about how we can incrementally build / modify C to get a more reliable and less bug prone language.

However ultimately "new C" will be designed by one or two guys at max, as it always happened with this kind of practical programming languages.

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#57

Post by pjmlp »

ams6110 wrote: post #53
pjmlp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Oberon, Spin, Singularity, Home, Inferno are all operating systems written in GC enabled system programming languages. D and Go are just following that thread. Eventually all mainstream OS will have such type of languages and C will be legacy. Microsoft is already slowly doing that by dropping support for C later than C90, and adding COM based API as the default Windows API. Now mainly for Metro, perhaps for t…

Objective-C was not created by Apple.

It has created by NeXT, which was bough by Apple, thus Apple holds the language copyright.

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#58

Post by pavlov »

marcusf wrote: post #10
kibwen wrote: post #3

I think that languages that are a just thin shell on top of C (as opposed to languages that merely target C, e.g. Chicken Scheme) might have some potential. I'll call this coffeescriptification --still eagerly awaiting the first transpiled language that does nothing but remove C's braces and semicolons. If someone doesn't do it by next April Fools, I certainly will (I already have the name in mind: Glee (the italics…

Sounds like what you're looking for is the original Bash source code, circa 1977, for example [1]: LOCAL STRING copyto(endch) REG CHAR endch; { REG CHAR c; WHILE (c=getch(endch))!=endch ANDF c DO pushstak(c|quote) OD zerostak(); IF c!=endch THEN error(badsub) FI } Applicable macros if you want to give your code that classic ALGOL 68 smell in [2]. [1] http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/... [2]…

I wonder why IF closes with FI, REP closes with PER and LOOP closes with POOL, but SWITCH fails to complete the series: it closes with ENDSW...

Why not go all the way with HCTIWS, when you've already abandoned your sanity to Cthulhu?

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#59

Post by zem »

paulsutter wrote: post #4

What could be more tedious than another low-level language based on subtle complaints about C?

seriously? i personally think this is an enormously exciting space to watch people explore, and i'm glad that the field seems to be enjoying a renaissance of sorts at the moment. there are a lot of powerful features that modern languages have developed, and if some of them can be brought to the C world without sacrificing the low-level features that systems programmers need, it will benefit everyone.

Re: C (Cbang) - A system oriented programming language

#60

Post by eli_gottlieb »

chwahoo wrote: post #54
antirez wrote: post #12

I didn't checked the details, but I would love to see ten attempts every year, trying to solve the same problem. D and Go are not trying to provide us with a better C, because they don't share the concept of, a language that translates straightforward to assembler, but still is designed so that you can mount good abstractions with it. This is what you need for kernel programming, embedded systems, and a good deal of…

> I bet this better C will arise in a few years at max, and it is not going to come from academia. I take this statement to mean: Academia is failing us by not providing us with the next generation C. If that was the intent, I think it's not a fair jab. Academia IS actively investigating low-level languages: ATS, Cyclone, and typed assembly are all examples. But, it's not academia's job to create widely-used language…

I mostly agree, but I would make a small correction: that's not what academic CS is paid for. Jonathan Shapiro didn't stop work on BitC because he ran out of enthusiasm but because he ran out of funding. Habit will only remain a live project while its PIs can keep the ~~grant money~~ spice flowing.
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