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Solod: Go can be a better C

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Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#101

Post by win311fwg »

owaislone wrote: post #72
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Go is a better C already, designed by C authors themselves, with other UNIX key figures. Which while some of the design decisions might be debatable, they actually knew what C is all about, informed by their own experience with what worked in C, Alef and Limbo, across UNIX, Plan 9 and Inferno.

Yeah but they were intentionally trying to build a better C++/Java, not a better C. It wasn't even aimed at things that C is good at. It was mostly aimed at writing high performance servers that have to scale really big not only in terms of performance but software complexity, size and contributions. So Go is a better C++ or Java for writing servers according to its creators.

> Yeah but they were so that intentionally trying to build a better C++/Java

They were trying to build a faster Python, thinking that would appeal to C++ developers. The theory was that developers were using C++ at Google because they had to, not because they wanted to, and would choose something like Python instead if it were up to the performance task. Although it turned out in the end that C++ developers actually wanted to use C++.

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#102

Post by pjmlp »

RetroTechie wrote: post #99
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Go is a better C already, designed by C authors themselves, with other UNIX key figures. Which while some of the design decisions might be debatable, they actually knew what C is all about, informed by their own experience with what worked in C, Alef and Limbo, across UNIX, Plan 9 and Inferno.

Wikipedia says Alef lacked garbage collection, contributing to it being abandoned. But does Limbo have any 'fatal flaws' like that? Especially compared to Go. No doubt Rob Pike is a prolific and capable programmer. But seems like he needed quite a few attempts before arriving at Go (looking at C's flaws -> Alef -> Limbo -> Go, Wikipedia also mentions a domain-specific language called Sawzall).

Which is another proof, that the professional experience of the UNIX idols, has shaped why Go, and not C all the way.

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#103

Post by pjmlp »

anamitra- wrote: post #97
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Go is a better C already, designed by C authors themselves, with other UNIX key figures. Which while some of the design decisions might be debatable, they actually knew what C is all about, informed by their own experience with what worked in C, Alef and Limbo, across UNIX, Plan 9 and Inferno.

I disagree. Go's main plus point is concurrency, whereas the irony is it lacks thread safety—something languages such as Java have had from, let's say, day one. You can fix that issue by manually managing sync.Pool objects for performance and, on top of that, use channels, but this completely defeats the purpose of Go's simplicity. Even if you want a top-of-the-line performance with some convenience, there exists an…

My point was not about Go vs Java.

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#104

Post by pjmlp »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #85
pjmlp wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides the sibling Biscuit, maybe because no one bothered to do it? As simple as that, not everyone of us is a Linus. I should also point out that if you are using a Mac, changes are its iBoot Safe C might already been replaced by Embedded Swift, a GC enabled systems language. Chapter 5 of The Garbage Collection Handbook, or A Unified Theory of Garbage Collection paper for the incoming replies related to RC. People…

> As simple as that, not everyone of us is a Linus. I’m pretty sure Linus could not have written Linux today. Too much hardware to support, too many drivers to write, before it’s remotely useful. Well, except perhaps on some specialised servers. Yes, not everyone is Linus. Otherwise we’d be using GNU Hurd. But he also came at the right time.

It is no accident that recent attempts to write hobby OSes nowadays target type 1 hypervisors instead of real hardware.

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#105

Post by pjmlp »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #82
pjmlp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better C++ is by definition a better C, no one should be using C in 21st century beyond UNIX clones, and embedded devs that are religiously against C++, even all modern C compilers are written in C++ nowadays. Anything you can think C is better, it isn't ISO C, rather non standard C compiler specific extensions, which can language can also be. Just do like in K&R C days, use Assembly for what language isn't directl…

> A better C++ is by definition a better C The definition is wrong, then. I wrote C++ for most of my career. And as of late, I found myself avoiding more and more features from it. The STL is mostly trash, not worth the increase in compilation times. Templates are good for containers, but that’s about it. Inheritance and polymorphism are circumstantial enough that I’m not sure they’re worth adding to the language: in…

I see it differently, given how C with Classes came to be, a Typescript for C in 1989.

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#106

Post by pjmlp »

dzonga wrote: post #92
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Go is a better C already, designed by C authors themselves, with other UNIX key figures. Which while some of the design decisions might be debatable, they actually knew what C is all about, informed by their own experience with what worked in C, Alef and Limbo, across UNIX, Plan 9 and Inferno.

ZIG is already the better C.

Zig is what Modula-2 already offered in 1978, Ada in 1983, Object Pascal in 1986, revamped in curly bracket syntax.

We need a little more in 2026, besides compile time execution.

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#107

Post by pjmlp »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #77
pjmlp wrote: post #22

Go is a better C already, designed by C authors themselves, with other UNIX key figures. Which while some of the design decisions might be debatable, they actually knew what C is all about, informed by their own experience with what worked in C, Alef and Limbo, across UNIX, Plan 9 and Inferno.

> Go is a better C already It’s not. Garbage collection made sure of it. I believe everyone agrees that a "better C" has to have manual memory management. Most even rule out Go as a systems language because of GC. Of course, I’m pretty sure Go is much better than C at some problems. But there’s no way in hell it supersedes it.

Nope, only the anti-GC religion would agree to that.

Most of those folks would never manage to replicate something like Xerox Cedar on their own, from 1980 in their beloved 2026 computers.

Thankfully we have the likes of Apple and Google, that have a my way or the highway education system for such developers, that want to go through their magical gardens.

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#108

Post by vanderZwan »

jamiejquinn wrote: post #57
kfreds wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a brittle approach to transpilation. A transpiler should translate all of the language's semantics, including resolving identifiers as symbols, and then choose legal names for them in the target language. Also, there is so much more to a language than its surface syntax. I've never designed a transpiler (I'm not a programmer), but surely the correct approach is to transform the source code into its ty…

I'm really sorry to be harsh but if you don't use programming languages and have never written a transpiler, why should anyone read your comment? You critique the approach as brittle and yet the approach you propose doesn't solve the thorny problem gp described of a growing ball of reserved keywords.

They technically didn't say that they don't use programming languages, they said they're not a programmer. There's plenty of other people who use programming languages regularly, but not necessarily because they're into them.

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#109

Post by pjmlp »

win311fwg wrote: post #101
owaislone wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but they were intentionally trying to build a better C++/Java, not a better C. It wasn't even aimed at things that C is good at. It was mostly aimed at writing high performance servers that have to scale really big not only in terms of performance but software complexity, size and contributions. So Go is a better C++ or Java for writing servers according to its creators.

> Yeah but they were so that intentionally trying to build a better C++/Java They were trying to build a faster Python, thinking that would appeal to C++ developers. The theory was that developers were using C++ at Google because they had to, not because they wanted to, and would choose something like Python instead if it were up to the performance task. Although it turned out in the end that C++ developers actually…

No they weren't, in fact they were very surprised by the adoption from Python folks.

"I was asked a few weeks ago, "What was the biggest surprise you encountered rolling out Go?" I knew the answer instantly: Although we expected C++ programmers to see Go as an alternative, instead most Go programmers come from languages like Python and Ruby. Very few come from C++.

We—Ken, Robert and myself—were C++ programmers when we designed a new language to solve the problems that we thought needed to be solved for the kind of software we wrote. It seems almost paradoxical that other C++ programmers don't seem to care."

https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/06/less-is-exponenti...

Re: Solod: Go can be a better C

#110

Post by dlisboa »

gwbas1c wrote: post #100
loup-vaillant wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Go is a better C already It’s not. Garbage collection made sure of it. I believe everyone agrees that a "better C" has to have manual memory management. Most even rule out Go as a systems language because of GC. Of course, I’m pretty sure Go is much better than C at some problems. But there’s no way in hell it supersedes it.

> Of course, I’m pretty sure Go is much better than C at some problems. But there’s no way in hell it supersedes it. C is great when you need to do manual memory management. Most software written today doesn't need to do manual memory management. (And frankly, for the typical software project, manual memory management is a liability.)

> C is great when you need to do manual memory management.

Is it still, today? There are other manual memory languages today with better safety records and ergonomics. Plus a host of new and better features.

I think C is really great if you need C. For libraries, for knowledge, for size, for compatibility, for "simplicity", for fun, for whatever.

But other than having a strong reason to want C, on a purely language feature comparison, it's not great.

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