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The C3 Programming Language

c3-lang.org

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Re: The C3 Programming Language

#11

Post by gritzko »

I wonder, at which point it is worth it to make a language? I personally implemented generics, slices and error propagation in C… that takes some work, but doable. Obviously, C stdlib goes to the trash bin, but there is not much value in it anyway. Not much code, and very obsolete.

Meanwhile, a compiler is an enormously complicated story. I personally never ever want to write a compiler, cause I already had more fun than I ever wanted working with distributed systems. While idiomatic C was not the way forward, my choice was a C dialect and Go for higher-level things.

How can we estimate these things? Or let's have fun, yolo?

Re: The C3 Programming Language

#12

Post by impoppy »

I haven’t tried C3 myself, but I happened to interact a lot with Christopher Lerno, Ginger Bill and multiple Zig maintainers before. Was great to learn that C3, Odin and Zig weren’t competing with each other but instead learn from each other and discuss various trade-offs they made when designing their languages. Generally was a very pleasant experience to learn from them on how and why they implemented building differently or what itch they were scratching when choosing or refusing to implement certain features.

Re: The C3 Programming Language

#13

Post by venuur »

klysm wrote: post #8
theflyinghorse wrote: post #4

I keep thinking about perhaps LLMs would make writing code in these lower-level-but-far-better-performing languages in vogue. Why have claude generate a python service when you could write a rust or C3 service with compiler doing a lot of heavy lifting around memory bugs?

Because there’s more python on the internet to interpolate from. LLMs are not equally good at all languages

That’s been my experience. LLMs excel at languages that are popular. JavaScript and Python are two great examples.

Re: The C3 Programming Language

#14

Post by yencabulator »

klysm wrote: post #8
theflyinghorse wrote: post #4

I keep thinking about perhaps LLMs would make writing code in these lower-level-but-far-better-performing languages in vogue. Why have claude generate a python service when you could write a rust or C3 service with compiler doing a lot of heavy lifting around memory bugs?

Because there’s more python on the internet to interpolate from. LLMs are not equally good at all languages

You can throw Claude at a completely private Rust code base with very specific niche requirements and conventions that are not otherwise common in Rust and it will demonstrate a remarkably strong ability to explain it and program according to the local idioms. I think your statement is based on liking a popular language, not on evidence..

Re: The C3 Programming Language

#15

Post by Fiveplus »

I've been following C3 for sometime now, and I really appreciate the discipline in the design philosophy here.

Neither does it force a new memory model on you, nor does it try to be C++. The killer feature for me is the full ABI compatibility. The fact that I no longer have to write bindings and can just mix C3 files into my existing C build system reduces the friction to near zero.

Kudos to the maintainer for sticking to the evolution, not revolution vision. If you are looking for a weekend language to learn that doesn't require resetting your brain but feels more modern than C99, I highly recommend giving this a shot. Great work by the team.

Re: The C3 Programming Language

#16

Post by dotancohen »

theflyinghorse wrote: post #4

I keep thinking about perhaps LLMs would make writing code in these lower-level-but-far-better-performing languages in vogue. Why have claude generate a python service when you could write a rust or C3 service with compiler doing a lot of heavy lifting around memory bugs?

  > Why have claude generate a python service when you could write a rust or C3 service with compiler doing a lot of heavy lifting around memory bugs?
The architecture of my current project is actually a Python/Qt application which is a thin wrapper around an LLM generated Rust application. I go over almost every line of the LLM generated Rust myself, but that machine is far more skilled at generating quality Rust than I currently am. But I am using this as an opportunity to learn.

Re: The C3 Programming Language

#18

Post by ivanjermakov »

impoppy wrote: post #12

I haven’t tried C3 myself, but I happened to interact a lot with Christopher Lerno, Ginger Bill and multiple Zig maintainers before. Was great to learn that C3, Odin and Zig weren’t competing with each other but instead learn from each other and discuss various trade-offs they made when designing their languages. Generally was a very pleasant experience to learn from them on how and why they implemented building diff…

> weren’t competing with each other but instead learn from each other

What is the difference? Using polite words to communicate?

Re: The C3 Programming Language

#20

Post by cb321 »

I see from `test/test_suite/compile_time_introspection/paramsof.c3t` that there is a way to get names & types of function parameters [1]. The language also seems to support default values { e.g. `int foo(int a, int b = 2) {...}` } and even call with keyword arguments/named parameters [2], but I couldn't find any `defaultof` or similar thing in the code. Does anyone know if this is just an oversight / temporary omission?

[1] https://github.com/c3lang/c3c/blob/master/test/test_suite/co...

[2] https://c3-lang.org/language-fundamentals/functions/

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