141–150 of 190 posts
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indeed, the ideas could be used more widely. fil-c runs on linux. what if linux ran on fil-c?
I was under the impression that fil-c's memory management (gc?) wouldn't work on a kernel? Be sweet if you could, ofc
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Every one of these posts is the same. There's this weird blindness to the problems and imperfections in Fil-C --- just shouting down. It reduces my confidence in Fil-C as a whole. Rust, for all its faults, at least engages with its critics. I've long faulted Rust's use of Result over exceptions, for example, but the maintainers at least acknowledge that other options exist and each has trade-offs. Not Pizlo and his f…
He claims the system provides memory safety under data races. Does it not?
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> But what is being overlooked, is the massive numerical dominance of C programmers I roll to doubt. I haven’t seen C topping programming language popularity charts for a long, long time. I used to interview software engineering candidates professionally. Candidates could pick any language they wanted for the interview. Python was chosen by about 70% of our interviewees. C was under 5%. (N=400 or so)
> I haven’t seen C topping programming language popularity charts C is still highly ranked on many charts. C (as of July 2026) is ranked #2 on the TIOBE index. PYPL has C and C++ weirdly merged, the annoying C/C++, and that comes in as #3. The IEEE and Redmonk have C firmly in the top 10, using different methodologies. We also have to consider how many years back that C's run in the top 10 goes. We have to also use c…
JavaScript at #6, when it should be at #1? Trailed by Visual Basic at #7? SQL (not a programming language) at #8 and R (have you ever seen an R job?) at #9. Then you have Rust just barely squeezing past Delphi? Followed by scratch???
Come on, this is not a serious source. Neither are the the rest really. Any popularity/usage list that doesn't have JS at first place is not serious.
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Rust is less safe because it has a feature for turning off safety, called `unsafe`. Fil-C does not have a way to turn off safety, and it enforces safety checks at runtime. That's the reasoning anyways. If you define another language Rust-Without-Any-Unsafe, then maybe that one is safer than Fil-C.
> If you define another language Rust-Without-Any-Unsafe, then maybe that one is safer than Fil-C. Just write `#![forbid(unsafe_code)]` at the top of your src/lib.rs, and track crates not using it with `cargo geiger`. You don't need a whole new language, it already provides the tools to wield that hatch shut. > Rust is less safe because it has a feature for turning off safety Can I write Fil-C's mmap wrapper in Fil-C…
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How does it do that? When the 64-bit pointer is actually a pointer, does it mangle it into something that is certainly not UTF-8 (e.g. changing its top byte to 0xC0, and assuming that bits 56-63 are the same as bits 48-55, or something like that)?
UTF-8 is a self-synchronizing encoding, so each UTF-8 byte tells you whether there were any previous bytes you'd need in order to understand it. Since we're storing a whole string our first byte logically cannot be such a "continuation byte", if it seems to be, we can say these eight bytes aren't UTF-8 encoded text but instead a pointer. The UTF-8 "continuation" marker is that the top bit is set and the next bit is n…
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A computer spends the vast majority of its time and memory in userspace, so this tradeoff isn't as bad as it sounds.
You can run your Fil–C userland on provably–secure seL4. (Left as an exercise for the reader)
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> But what is being overlooked, is the massive numerical dominance of C programmers I roll to doubt. I haven’t seen C topping programming language popularity charts for a long, long time. I used to interview software engineering candidates professionally. Candidates could pick any language they wanted for the interview. Python was chosen by about 70% of our interviewees. C was under 5%. (N=400 or so)
Speaking for myself, I am never hired because I know C or C++, rather specific managed languages, however if there is the need to look under the runtime hood, or have bindings, like most Python libraries actually are, then suddenly it is welcome that I know C and C++ versus most folks on the team.
Yeah I know the feeling. But you don’t need Fil-C to learn C.
That said, with a GC, you could make some great tools & visualisations for learning C and understanding the memory layout of a running C program. That would be cool to see
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> If you define another language Rust-Without-Any-Unsafe, then maybe that one is safer than Fil-C. Just write `#![forbid(unsafe_code)]` at the top of your src/lib.rs, and track crates not using it with `cargo geiger`. You don't need a whole new language, it already provides the tools to wield that hatch shut. > Rust is less safe because it has a feature for turning off safety Can I write Fil-C's mmap wrapper in Fil-C…
It should be mentioned that rust's type system has a long-standing known bug compromising memory safety, as made famous by cve-rs. It's perhaps not a big issue for most people but if you are someone that wants the assurances of #![forbid(unsafe_code)] that should probably be on your radar.
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> But what is being overlooked, is the massive numerical dominance of C programmers I roll to doubt. I haven’t seen C topping programming language popularity charts for a long, long time. I used to interview software engineering candidates professionally. Candidates could pick any language they wanted for the interview. Python was chosen by about 70% of our interviewees. C was under 5%. (N=400 or so)
to be fair, most programmers are at least a little bit polyglot, and if you know python and C and you're trying to solve an interview problem, python is gonna be the easier option 99% of the time, even if you're not that great at python compared to C.
If python/go/C# is easier to write, why choose C? Fil-C removes C’s performance and interoperability advantages.
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Both Rust and Fil-C have unsafe blocks, but in Fil-C latter system, only Pizlo gets to write them. Why am I not filled with confidence?
Fil-C has no unsafe blocks