191–200 of 217 posts
But Rust evangelists cannot stop people from using any particular language
Assembly is the only language that matters. It's the only language the computer "understands"
Everything other language is just an abstraction over it
When it comes to abstractions not everyone has the same preferences
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Arduino has 16-bit int, so the timer app will work up to 32.767 or 65.535 seconds, that is less than two minutes.
When you choose unsigned int for that type, you compare against UINT_MAX and return an EOVERFLOW, ENOMEM, EOUT_OF_RANGE or whatever you like when someone sets a timer greater than that. Or you choose another type, i.e. unsigned long which is guaranteed to take values to at least 4294967295. I happen to program for the Arduino platform recently and milliseconds in the Arduino API are typed unsigned long. If your decis…
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So you've backtracked from most variables, to number of elements. For number of elements there's size_t. So again, when are "natural types" the right answer?
When the C was invented? I feel it'd have been much more burdensome and inhibited the authors of various compilers if they had to write software or otherwise emulation of all these lenghths on the archs of the time. Still today I'd say, you cited size_t, I think that's the most important type, otherwise we shouldn't make most uses of integers as named fixed lengths unless we are specifically performing some mathemati…
In what situation is plain int sufficient? If your values always fit in 16 bits, it works, but what's special about 16? A value that goes from 0 to 100 only needs 7 bits, so int is not efficient there either, you should have asked for 7 bits which would round up to 8 on most platforms. Arduino is an 8–bit platform that requires several instructions to add 16 bits to 16 bits — int isn't the most efficient type.
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When the C was invented? I feel it'd have been much more burdensome and inhibited the authors of various compilers if they had to write software or otherwise emulation of all these lenghths on the archs of the time. Still today I'd say, you cited size_t, I think that's the most important type, otherwise we shouldn't make most uses of integers as named fixed lengths unless we are specifically performing some mathemati…
So you write a timer app that counts in milliseconds in an int variable, and it works on your machine where that's 32 bits. I compile it for Arduino, and I can't set a timer for longer than 32 seconds in the future. Isn't that a problem? You shouldn't have used int — you should have declared a maximum time value (99:59:59) and how many bits are needed to store that value. In what situation is plain int sufficient? If…
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Repeating a previous comment of mine ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32784959 ) about an article in Byte Magazine (August 1983) on the C programming language: From page 52: > Operating systems have to deal with some very unusual objects and events: interrupts; memory maps; apparent locations in memory that really represent devices, hardware traps and faults; and I/O controllers. It is unlikely that even a low-…
I've started describing what C does is breaking the third wall. Which in theater sis when the actors acknowledge they're in a play. C totally accepts breaking the third wall. And Pascal doesn't. Problem with C currently is the language is controlled by people that think programming languages should be like Pascal.
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It is often said that C became popular just because Unix was popular, due to being free -- it just "rode its coattails" as you put it. As if you could separate Unix from C. Without C there wouldn't have been any Unix to become popular, there wouldn't have been any coattails to ride. C gave Unix some advantages that other operating systems of the 1970s and 80s didn't have: Unix was ported to many different computers s…
> Unix wasn't the first operating system to be written in a high-level language. The Burroughs OS was written in Algol, Multics was written in PL/I, and much of VMS was written in BLISS. None of those languages became popular. Of course, they weren't available as free beer with source tapes. > Apple replaced the original Macintosh OS with a system based on a Unix. Only because they decided to buy NeXT instead of Be.…
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So you've backtracked from most variables, to number of elements. For number of elements there's size_t. So again, when are "natural types" the right answer?
Tbh I am finding it a bit hard to think of a use of integers that either isn't a length or a mathematical operation, so I gotta say it does narrow things down.
I remember reading some crank on slashdot decades ago seriously claiming that Windows was not an operating system. This type of argument hasn’t gotten any more intelligent since.
Write clickbait, get kneejerk. I guess some other things are at least as old as C.
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I've started describing what C does is breaking the third wall. Which in theater sis when the actors acknowledge they're in a play. C totally accepts breaking the third wall. And Pascal doesn't. Problem with C currently is the language is controlled by people that think programming languages should be like Pascal.
That would be the fourth wall ________ | | | actors | | | audience
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Tbh I am finding it a bit hard to think of a use of integers that either isn't a length or a mathematical operation, so I gotta say it does narrow things down.
Bit fields? (Assuming one's not using a struct)