Earlier quoted context omitted.
Write an emulator! If you write an emulator, you can probably skip "learning C".
What might I read to begin to learn which platform to emulate and how to get started?
Learn C
61–70 of 182 posts
Re: Learn C
#62Re: Learn C
#63I "learned" C by writing a smal runit/daemontools replacement. Most of the work was learning the features I needed from libc: http://uggedal.github.io/going/going.c.html
Re: Learn C
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Reliability and security requirements are up to the developer to impose on any language" This is a common fallback in these discussions, but it is misguided. Yes, you have to work to make software secure in any language; no, this does not mean C is equivalent. In C, you still need to worry about high-level problems like SQL injection, while simultaneously having to worry about low-level problems like integer overflo…
Well, I actually see that as an advantage vs. placing trust in an abstraction you have no control over that can provide security problems for you. So I guess we'll agree to disagree on this one. Curious though, in what would you implement the examples I gave?
The control software for the Ariane rockets is written in Ada, which is apparently meant to be especially ‘secure’/predictable.
And promptly blew up the rocket.
Re: Learn C
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think she might have given up on programming a bit prematurely. The pendulum has obviously swung completely the other way with high level languages like Haskell pushing forward compiler optimization, and JIT VMs pushing forward in other directions. It's actually an exciting time for "smart compilers".
> I think she might have given up on programming a bit prematurely. The pendulum has obviously swung completely the other way with high level languages like Haskell pushing forward compiler optimization C compilers were optimizing long before Haskell. From her interview, I don't understand why she couldn't work on optimizers even if someone else advocated optimization being programmer's repsonsibility?
I believe she worked on optimizers her entire career as a logician, scientist and manager rather than as an implementing programmer.
http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/witexhibit/wit_hall_allen....
Re: Learn C
#66How does a musician without any formal CS education and a admitted lack of understanding of some very fundamental software things, such as pointers and memory, land a San Francisco dev job? I thought those jobs were in very high demand
Sometimes social skills are more important than technical prowess.
not more important
Re: Learn C
#67We need less code written in C, not more. We already have a problem with a massive, unreliable, insecure ecosystem of legacy C code that is hard to escape; writing more software in C makes that problem worse. Most software is written to solve high-level problems. Using a high-level language is sensible, time-saving, budget-saving, improves portability, and saves on headaches later. The same rule that applies to COBOL…
> We already have a problem with a massive, unreliable, insecure ecosystem of legacy C code A ton of the world's software with the highest reliability requirements is written in C and C++. Nuclear power plants? Yes. [1] Joint Strike Fighter? Yes. [2] Mars rover? Yes. [3] Your Tesla? Yes [4] US telephone systems. Stock exchanges. Bloomberg. Your cell phone OS (incl. many years before smartphones). The list goes on and…
The use of C and C-likes by the JPL rather than Lisp is a sad story; it means robotics has not advanced as fast as it could have. http://www.flownet.com/gat/jpl-lisp.html
Re: Learn C
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was there any study done to the (un)reliability of C? I know for a fact practically every piece software I use is programmed in either C or C++. The sole exceptions are Anki and Gentoo's portage system, both Python. And I'm pretty sure the reason portage is so extremely slow is because it is in Python (I've checked, it's not I/O-bound). And Anki is some very unreliable software. In fact, give me a single big desktop…
> And I'm pretty sure the reason portage is so extremely slow is because it is in Python (I've checked, it's not I/O-bound) I was under the impression portage was "slow" (relative to other package management tools) due to the fact that it built everything from source (for which it uses make). Where is the Python bottleneck? > In fact, give me a single big desktop software project made with a language that is not C or…
It's been a while since I used Gentoo, but most of the serious users consider build-from-source as a feature and don't penalize portage for that. I believe your parent is referring to the sometimes annoyingly long dependency computation time of something like emerge -uDN world.
Re: Learn C
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, I actually see that as an advantage vs. placing trust in an abstraction you have no control over that can provide security problems for you. So I guess we'll agree to disagree on this one. Curious though, in what would you implement the examples I gave?
The control software for the Ariane rockets is written in Ada, which is apparently meant to be especially ‘secure’/predictable. And promptly blew up the rocket.
As I understand it, this was in part specifically because they turned off the protection the language provided.