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The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

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Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#261

Post by jlgreco »

sp4rki wrote: post #150
MichaelGG wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's being deliberately obtuse. How many languages are lower level than C, besides assembly? If your ranking has every language in the "high level" camp, then your ranking is poorly calibrated.

Assembly is not one language (even if they all look very alike). It's a collection of opcodes or mnemonics specific to a specific architecture with a specific instruction set that map to the later. Even then writing assembly for MASM, TASM, WASM, or WhateverASM for Linux, Windows, or Winux (or whatever) can and will probably differ in structure and in the specific mnemonics used. There's machine code, low level langu…

> MASM, TASM, WASM, or WhateverASM

My favorite WhateverASM has got to be the "Single Pass Assembler".. or SPASM. I like to think the name was a backronym.

Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#262

Post by smosher »

scott_s wrote: post #238
smosher wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter, his description is still the same kind of nonsense in line with having a VM. I get the feeling that he thought the thing he meant to say is actually the thing he said.

Sorry, I don't see that. What he said is clear to me: The C virtual machine does not provide an accurate model of why your code is fast on a modern machine. He's saying that the abstraction that C provides has deviated significantly from the underlying hardware. Considering the kinds of hoops that modern processor go through, this is a valid point. And the above should answer the sibling's question, too.

Sorry, I don't see that.

Try reading the part I quoted. I think you're conflating my criticisms with that of someone else. Yes, C abstracts the hardware, and always has. That's the point I made in the first place: its memory abstraction is a prerequisite. Hardware and operating systems provide that to C, in direct contradiction to the comment I replied to (which claims C provides it.)

Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#263

Post by sp4rki »

jlgreco wrote: post #261
sp4rki wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assembly is not one language (even if they all look very alike). It's a collection of opcodes or mnemonics specific to a specific architecture with a specific instruction set that map to the later. Even then writing assembly for MASM, TASM, WASM, or WhateverASM for Linux, Windows, or Winux (or whatever) can and will probably differ in structure and in the specific mnemonics used. There's machine code, low level langu…

> MASM, TASM, WASM, or WhateverASM My favorite WhateverASM has got to be the "Single Pass Assembler".. or SPASM. I like to think the name was a backronym.

Hah! You deserve a billion upvotes because of the chuckles I just had remembering trying to explain the difference between one pass and two pass to a junior dev (which was completely irrelevant to our jobs at the time, I suspect he found something in Stack Overflow about it or something)

Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#264

Post by jlgreco »

rayiner wrote: post #52
oinksoft wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://developer.gnome.org/glib/ http://apr.apache.org/ Choose one.

The problem is choice. If you're writing a library, no matter which containers you choose you'll have users that chose differently. So you either require full buy-in for your framework (like GTK does with GLIB) or you end up exposing the lowest common denominator of functionality (C strings and arrays).

I've long been a diehard C fan, and I still jump at the opportunity to use it, but the realization that choice can be harmful has gradually pushed me away from C.

The problem of choice with libraries is really only the beginning though. Coding style/formatting choice, language feature choice (infamously an issue with C++; which subset of the language to use is the source of most trouble in C++ teams in my experience), build system choice, etc are all sources of trouble. Most modern languages cover some of these with various effectiveness, but miss others. Unfortunately, the popular modern languages seem to do rather poorly in these areas.

I find either extreme comforting. The reckless freedom that C offers is alluring, but the bondage of a batteries included language with strong idioms covering the entire system makes for better programmers.

Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#265

Post by millerm »

darwinGod wrote: post #228

To folks who think C code is in general a mess of Pointers, macros, and goto's - Go download Postgres codebase,build cscope,open vim.. and try browsing the code. Arguably, one of the most beautiful C-code bases you can get hold off.

I just did. I agree with you.

Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#266

Post by kelvin0 »

madhadron wrote: post #53

Oh for heavens' sakes. Yet more ignorance. A more realistic view of C: - C is straightforward to compile into fast machine code...on a PDP-11. Its virtual machine does not match modern architectures very well, and its explicitness about details of its machine mean FORTRAN compilers typically produce faster code. The C virtual machine does not provide an accurate model of why your code is fast on a modern machine. The…

The C 'virtual machine' and its effectiveness is mostly at polarizing otherwise rational individuals.

The use of the term 'virtual machine' for C is appropriate in the case of an individual wanting to purposefully show that he has a 'better' handle on the semantics, and that a mere mortal surely would not understand his glorious knowledgs.

Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#267

Post by angersock »

betterunix wrote: post #165
papsosouid wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of what you said supports your initial claim that the author is ignorant. In fact, even if we pretend that everything you said is true, none of it contradicts the article, or the authors conclusions. Yes, C has lots of areas where other languages are better. And yet, it is still the most practical language to use because of the combination of things that it does well.

"it is still the most practical language" Only in extremely limited contexts: low-level code for operating systems that happened to have been written in C. Otherwise, there is a better language for pretty much every use-case of C.

How might you suggest that I write a good compression, hashing, or encryption library with a lot of bit twiddling?

Any good alternatives to C?

Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#269

Post by sea6ear »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #199
geophile wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended a tutorial on Go, and while I liked much of what I heard, the tutorial was so poorly done that I did not leave with a good high-level understanding. I also left with the impression that it is very early days with Go, in the sense that several parts of the language are evolving. (Or maybe I have this impression because the presenter loved diving into ratholes.)

If you have an hour go through http://tour.golang.org/#1 . If you're like me and can't enjoy a new language without connecting it to the network and passing some JSON around, check out http://golang.org/doc/articles/wiki/ and take a look at http://golang.org/pkg/encoding/json/#Marshal (if, also like me, you're picky about field name casing, pay attention to the little bit about `json:"myName"`)

I'll second this.

I went through the Tour of Go over a 3-day weekend when I didn't have many obligations and messed with a reasonable portion of the examples although none of the exercises (I think).

I really like it, although I don't think it replaces C's niche. But I think for the level where you'd like some of the structure and goodies of C++ or Java without the complexity it's pretty compelling.

The main thing I've been wishing were different about Go recently is that I wish it could generate some kind of C style dlls that could be interfaced with from other languages. It seems that Go wants to be the top-level, so I don't really know a way to use it for libraries or extensions for other languages.

So instead I'm considering C and Lua - C for the library with possibly a linked or embedded Lua to give some higher level niceties.

My hope is that I could create extensions that are callable from other languages using C APIs and then in the extension push some of the actual computations to Lua when it makes sense to use things like lists/dictionaries.

Re: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C

#270

Post by cunac »

vannevar wrote: post #229

When you're an expert in C, you tend to forget how much you've really learned. And not just about the language itself, or the available libraries, but about your own coding style . As an experienced programmer, you have habits and intuition that make developing and debugging your code vastly easier than for a novice. The reason that C has given so much ground to a language like Java is not that Java is intrinsically…

Actually they will ake java 125/hr guy and still be ahead in terms of time/cost
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