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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

#231

Post by kelnos »

WalterBright wrote: post #199
kelnos wrote: post #127

I'm kinda in the opposite camp. After doing a bunch of VB in my tweens and teens, I learned Java, C, and C++ in college, settling on mostly C for personal and professional projects. I became a core developer of Xfce and worked on that for 5 years. Then I moved into backend development, where I was doing all Java, Scala, and Python. It was... dare I say... easy! Sure, these kinds of languages bring with them other pro…

> Memory leaks, NULL pointer dereferences, use-after-free I suffered writing those for many years. I finally simply learned not to do them anymore. Sort of like there's a grain of sand on the bottom of my foot and the skin just sort of entombed it in a callous.

I've seen you make these kinds of comments before on other articles. Please stop. Not everyone is perfect and can forevermore avoid making any mistakes. I strongly suspect your opinion of your skill here is overinflated. Even if it isn't, and you really are that good, everyone cannot be in the top 0.00001% of all programmers out there, so your suggestion to "simply" learn not to make mistakes is useless.

This all just comes off incredibly arrogant, if I'm being honest.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#232

Post by tartoran »

BuckRogers wrote: post #174
kelnos wrote: post #127

I'm kinda in the opposite camp. After doing a bunch of VB in my tweens and teens, I learned Java, C, and C++ in college, settling on mostly C for personal and professional projects. I became a core developer of Xfce and worked on that for 5 years. Then I moved into backend development, where I was doing all Java, Scala, and Python. It was... dare I say... easy! Sure, these kinds of languages bring with them other pro…

That is very interesting. You have quite the resume too. While I've dabbled in nearly everything, I'm a day to day pro C# developer and I absolutely love it. I've never been upset or had a complaint. If I were forced off for some reason, I'd just go to Typescript. I can't imagine using C. Perhaps with some form of AI valgrind. The problems C solved are just not relevant any longer, and it remains entrenched in 2025.…

It depends on problem domain. If you're writing kernel level code or device drivers you wouldn't use C# or typescript.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#233

Post by pyjarrett »

phicoh wrote: post #160
graycat wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Ada was first announced, I rushed to read about it -- sounded good. But so far, never had access to it. So, now, after a long time, Ada is starting to catch on??? When Ada was first announced, back then, my favorite language was PL/I, mostly on CP67/CMS, i.e., IBM's first effort at interactive computing with a virtual machine on an IBM 360 instruction set. Wrote a little code to illustrate digital Fourier calcul…

I recently started re-reading "Programming in Ada" by J.G.P. Barnes about the original Ada. In my opinion, it was not that good of a language. Plenty of ways to trigger undefined behavior. Where C was clearly designed to be a practical language with feedback from implementing an operating system in C. Ada lacked that kind of practical experience. And it shows. I don't know anything about modern day Ada, but I can see…

> Plenty of ways to trigger undefined behavior

I'm curious about this list, because it definitely doesn't seem that way these days. It'd be interesting to see how many of these are still possible now.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#234

Post by CrimsonCape »

TurboHaskal wrote: post #13

This reads like a cautionary tale about getting nerdsniped, without a happy ending.

Yeah, I think every programmer experiences the "I should write a language" moment when the solution to the problem is abstracted to be the language itself.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#235

Post by astrange »

checker659 wrote: post #48
anymouse123456 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

Not to mention, modern CPUs have essentially been designed to make C code run as fast as possible.

I don't think that's true. They've co-evolved, but C simply does less.

I've never seen a good way to make a CPU that's good for "not C" languages. Those are usually by people who are aggressively uninterested in being fast and so insist on semantics that simply wouldn't get faster if done in hardware. Like the way most Haskell programs execute is just bad and based on bad ideas.

But in both cases, modern CPUs are mostly network- then I/O- then memory-bound. Most C programs aren't written to respect that very well.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#236

Post by astrange »

Ygg2 wrote: post #32
anymouse123456 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

> 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…

> C takes me more time to feel productive. I have to write code, then unit test, then property tests, then run valgrind, check ubsan is on. Make more tests. Do property testing, then fuzz testing.

Have you tried looking around and noticing nobody else does that and it's, like, fine?

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#237

Post by jakogut »

kelnos wrote: post #127

I'm kinda in the opposite camp. After doing a bunch of VB in my tweens and teens, I learned Java, C, and C++ in college, settling on mostly C for personal and professional projects. I became a core developer of Xfce and worked on that for 5 years. Then I moved into backend development, where I was doing all Java, Scala, and Python. It was... dare I say... easy! Sure, these kinds of languages bring with them other pro…

Similarly, I went from writing a lot of C to Python, and I appreciate both of them for almost opposite reasons. I ended up finding I like Cython quite a bit, even though the syntax leaves much to be desired. The power, performance, and flexibility of C combined with the batteries included nature of Python is a match made in heaven.

You're also still very much free to write either language purely, and "glue" them together easily using Cython.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#238

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

phicoh wrote: post #153
kelnos wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust is more like C++ (though still not really) than like C. Rust is a complete re-imagination of what a systems language could be.

My conclusion is that C is not a good basis for what Rust is trying to do. The kind of reliability Rust is trying to provide with almost no runtime overhead requires a much more complex language than C.

... and C++ is a much more complex language than C.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#239

Post by [deleted] »

davedx wrote: post #221
ohgr wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d add that the Rust code and C code will probably have the same number of bugs. The C code will likely have some vulnerabilities on top of those. Rust doesn’t magically make the vast majority of bugs go away. Most of bugs are entirely portable!

This is objectively nonsense

[deleted]

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#240

Post by BigJono »

kelnos wrote: post #231
WalterBright wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Memory leaks, NULL pointer dereferences, use-after-free I suffered writing those for many years. I finally simply learned not to do them anymore. Sort of like there's a grain of sand on the bottom of my foot and the skin just sort of entombed it in a callous.

I've seen you make these kinds of comments before on other articles. Please stop. Not everyone is perfect and can forevermore avoid making any mistakes. I strongly suspect your opinion of your skill here is overinflated. Even if it isn't, and you really are that good, everyone cannot be in the top 0.00001% of all programmers out there, so your suggestion to "simply" learn not to make mistakes is useless. This all jus…

You come off as incredibly arrogant too, you just don't realise it because you have the current mainstream opinion and the safety of a crowd.

Do you know how fucking obnoxious it is when 200 people like you come into every thread to tell 10 C or Javascript developers that they can't be trusted with the languages and environments they've been using for decades? There are MILLIONS of successful projects across those two languages, far more than Rust or Typescript. Get a fucking grip.

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