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I stopped everything and started writing C again

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Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#71

Post by kokada »

brucehoult wrote: post #26
lqet wrote: post #11

I fully understand that sentiment. For several years now, I have also felt the strong urge to develop something in pure C. My main language is C++, but I have noticed over and over again that I really enjoy using the old C libraries - the interfaces are just so simple and basic, there is no fluff. When I develop methods in pure C, I always enjoy that I can concentrate 100% on algorithmic aspects instead of architectu…

Try doing C with a garbage collector ... it's very liberating. Do `#include ` then just use `GC_malloc()` instead of `malloc()` and never free. And add `-lgc` to linking. It's already there on most systems these days, lots of things use it. You can add some efficiency by `GC_free()` in cases where you're really really sure, but it's entirely optional, and adds a lot of danger. Using `GC_malloc_atomic()` also adds eff…

I think one of the nice things about C is that since the language was not designed to abstract e.g.: heap is that it is really easy to replace manual memory management with GC or any other approach to manage memory, because most APIs expects to be called with `malloc()` when heap allocation is needed.

I think the only other language that has a similar property is Zig.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#72

Post by zerr »

randomNumber7 wrote: post #27

Despite what some people religiously think about programming languages, imo C was so successful because it is practical. Yes it is unsafe and you can do absurd things. But it also doesn't get in the way of just doing what you want to do.

No, it's because of Unix and AT&T monopoly.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#75

Post by gpderetta »

anta40 wrote: post #29
baq wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust has three major issues: - compile times - compile times - compile times Not a problem for small utilities, but once you start pulling dependencies... pain is felt.

Long compile time isn't a new issue for language with advanced features. Before Rust, it was Haskell. And before Haskell, it was C++. And implementation wise, probably there's something to do with LLVM.

Compile time is also my top three major issues with C++, in a list that also includes memory safety.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#76

Post by enriquto »

brucehoult wrote: post #26
lqet wrote: post #11

I fully understand that sentiment. For several years now, I have also felt the strong urge to develop something in pure C. My main language is C++, but I have noticed over and over again that I really enjoy using the old C libraries - the interfaces are just so simple and basic, there is no fluff. When I develop methods in pure C, I always enjoy that I can concentrate 100% on algorithmic aspects instead of architectu…

Try doing C with a garbage collector ... it's very liberating. Do `#include ` then just use `GC_malloc()` instead of `malloc()` and never free. And add `-lgc` to linking. It's already there on most systems these days, lots of things use it. You can add some efficiency by `GC_free()` in cases where you're really really sure, but it's entirely optional, and adds a lot of danger. Using `GC_malloc_atomic()` also adds eff…

> Try doing C with a garbage collector ... it's very liberating.

> Do `#include ` then just use `GC_malloc()` instead of `malloc()` and never free.

Even more liberating (and dangerous!): do not even malloc, just use variable length-arrays:

    void f(float *y, float *x, int n)
    {
            float t[n];  // temporary array, destroyed at the end of scope
            ...
    }
This style forces you to alloc the memory at the outermost scope where it is visible, which is a nice thing in itself (even if you use malloc).

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#77

Post by imtringued »

anymouse123456 wrote: post #14
hehbot wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Rust is not free of trade offs and you're not helping the cause the way you think you are. Just a few off the top: - Rust is a much more complex language than C - Rust has a much, much slower compiler than pretty much any language out there - Rust takes most people far longer to "feel" productive - Rust applications are sometimes (often?) slower than comparable C applications - Rust applications are sometimes (often?…

That's fair, but to me what drags C and C++ really down for me is the difficulty in building them. As I get older I just want to write the code and not mess with makefiles or CMake. I don't want starting a new project to be a "commitment" that requires me to sit down for two hours.

For me Rust isn't really competing against unchecked C. It's competing against Java and boy does the JVM suck outside of server deployments. C gets disqualified from the beginning, so what you're complaining about falls on deaf ears.

I'm personally suffering the consequences of "fast" C code every day. There are days where 30 minutes of my time are being wasted on waiting for antivirus software. Thinks that ought to take 2 seconds take 2 minutes. What's crazy is that in a world filled with C programs, you can't say with a good conscience that antivirus software is unnecessary.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#78

Post by Ygg2 »

thih9 wrote: post #56
Ygg2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rust is a much more complex language than C Feature wise, yes. C forces you to keep a lot of irreducible complexity in your head. > Rust has a much, much slower compiler than pretty much any language out there True. But it doesn't matter much in my opinion. A decent PC should be able to grind any Rust project in few seconds. > Rust applications are sometimes Sometimes is a weasel word. C is sometimes slower than Ja…

Good for you. Like the grandparent commenter said, for others these tradeoffs might be important. E.g.: > I am disappointed with how poorly Rust's build scales, even with the incremental test-utf-8 benchmark which shouldn't be affected that much by adding unrelated files. (...) > I decided to not port the rest of quick-lint-js to Rust. But... if build times improve significantly, I will change my mind! https://quick-…

> Good for you. > https://quick-lint-js.com/blog/cpp-vs-rust-build-times/

Look you're picking a memory unsafe language versus a safe one. Whatever meager gains you save on compilation times (and the link shows the difference is meager if you aren't on a MacOS, which I'm not) will be obliterated by losses in figuring out which UB nasal demon was accidentally released.

This is like that argument that dynamic types save time, because you can catch error in tests. But then have to write more tests to compensate, so you lose time overall.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#79

Post by relaxing »

zaphirplane wrote: post #52
bsenftner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 16 years ago I started working with a tech company that used "C++ as C", meaning they used a C++ compiler but wrote pretty much everything in C, with the exception of using classes, but more like Python data classes, with no polymorphism or inheritance, only composition. Their classes were not to hide, but to encapsulate. Over time, some C++ features were allowed, like lambdas, but in general we wrote data clas…

Sounds like they know what they are doing. How is using c++ with only data classes different from using c with struct

Namespaces are useful for wrapping disparate bits of C code, to get around namespace collisions during integration.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#80

Post by imtringued »

IshKebab wrote: post #59
TingPing wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real projects get into the millions of lines of code, Rust will not scale to compile that quickly.

Not quickly, no. But neither does C++ (how long does it take to compile Clang?) and people manage fine. Faster would obviously be better, but it's not big enough of a deal to cancel out all the advantages compared to C.

I remember a project that used boost for very few things, but it included a single boost header in almost every file. That one boost header absolutely inflated the build times to insane levels.
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