Live data from Hacker News

ZZ is a modern formally provable dialect of C

github.com

1–10 of 157 posts

Re: ZZ is a modern formally provable dialect of C

#4

It can’t be a dialect of a language if the compiler of said language doesn’t compile it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language#Dialects,...

Plenty of well-known dialects are not subsets of said language (/compiled by its compiler).

Re: ZZ is a modern formally provable dialect of C

#5
> where we still program C out of desperation

I agree it's the standard and the only thing that actually works (author's words), but it's still a pleasure for me to write and have to deal with C (for embedded). I'd be desperate if I have to be forced to deal with huge different paradigms because pointer problems or insert-your-C-rant-here. C is not going to be replaced on embedded any moment soon.

Re: ZZ is a modern formally provable dialect of C

#6
Very cool idea! What I love about C is that all sorts of programming language can talk to its ABI and that it fits well with low level programming.

However it is a cumbersome and unsafe language. This seems like a very nice solution. You can write in a much safer language while producing C code which does not look too alien relative to what you wrote

I have been interested in Rust but thinking it looks a tad too complicated. This may be a happy inbetween.

Re: ZZ is a modern formally provable dialect of C

#8
Okay, it's provable... what value do really get out of it? isn't the whole reason why we still use C because it gets so close to resolving (or at least acknowledging) hardware or platform-level implementation problems? we can continue to re-invent the language in isolation but you can't replace a hardware-level programming language in this manner.

Re: ZZ is a modern formally provable dialect of C

#9
post #5

> where we still program C out of desperation I agree it's the standard and the only thing that actually works (author's words), but it's still a pleasure for me to write and have to deal with C (for embedded). I'd be desperate if I have to be forced to deal with huge different paradigms because pointer problems or insert-your-C-rant-here . C is not going to be replaced on embedded any moment soon.

[deleted]

Re: ZZ is a modern formally provable dialect of C

#10
post #7

I like how they incorporate an SMT solver. They claim: “all code is proven”. What does that mean? What is proven about the code? Absence of memory bugs, or actual correctness of algorithms?

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
Post reply on HN