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The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

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Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#21

Post by psychoslave »

acp2020 wrote: post #20
pjmlp wrote: post #3

Programming languages are software products like everything else in the industry, they either stagnate or evolve.

Then what happened to C?

Maybe an unique historical opportunity for a tool "good enough" to do the job, seizing the widespread adoption possibility, and letting no room in this ecological niche.

That is, yes, there is room for stable languages, but it’s already fully occupied. So only languages targeting market with a mindset open to "better moving continuously anywhere than risking sclerosis" can flourish.

Now, that might be a bit caricatural of course.

Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#23

Post by pjmlp »

psychoslave wrote: post #21
acp2020 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what happened to C?

Maybe an unique historical opportunity for a tool "good enough" to do the job, seizing the widespread adoption possibility, and letting no room in this ecological niche. That is, yes, there is room for stable languages, but it’s already fully occupied. So only languages targeting market with a mindset open to "better moving continuously anywhere than risking sclerosis" can flourish. Now, that might be a bit caricatur…

C has had plenty of updates, see my reply.

Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#24

Post by orestis »

Obligatory Clojure plug :)

Most, if not all, code from 5 years ago runs with no changes whatsoever.

The stewards of Clojure heavily advocate and practice “stable” development where backwards compatibility is a requirement. Combined with the famous JVM compatibility means that the whole enterprise is a very stable foundation for building stuff.

Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#25

Post by psychoslave »

pjmlp wrote: post #23
psychoslave wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe an unique historical opportunity for a tool "good enough" to do the job, seizing the widespread adoption possibility, and letting no room in this ecological niche. That is, yes, there is room for stable languages, but it’s already fully occupied. So only languages targeting market with a mindset open to "better moving continuously anywhere than risking sclerosis" can flourish. Now, that might be a bit caricatur…

C has had plenty of updates, see my reply.

Stable is not frozen. Yes, C got updates, it doesn’t mean they introduced large sets of features, which is what this thread is about. C did not incorporated much things over the years, unlike C++ for example.

Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#26

Post by WJW »

acp2020 wrote: post #20
pjmlp wrote: post #3

Programming languages are software products like everything else in the industry, they either stagnate or evolve.

Then what happened to C?

C has been evolving, there are C89, C90, C99, C11 and C17 standards and a new one is in the make.

Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#27

Post by pjmlp »

psychoslave wrote: post #25
pjmlp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C has had plenty of updates, see my reply.

Stable is not frozen. Yes, C got updates, it doesn’t mean they introduced large sets of features, which is what this thread is about. C did not incorporated much things over the years, unlike C++ for example.

I recommend a thorough read of ISO standards and accompanying documents.

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/projects

Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#28

Post by beagle3 »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #9

I don't think the rant about Ubuntu Unity is fair. If anything, Ubuntu 18.04/20.04 LTS releases based on Gnome shell are serious regressions in so many ways (FF not opening new windows on top, std menu missing wtf, etc etc) that I'm considering something KDE-based next.

Unity is still an apt-get install away. I’m using it with 20.04 and haven’t missed a thing, even though it’s not getting any new features.

Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#29

Post by beagle3 »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #13
tannhaeuser wrote: post #9

I don't think the rant about Ubuntu Unity is fair. If anything, Ubuntu 18.04/20.04 LTS releases based on Gnome shell are serious regressions in so many ways (FF not opening new windows on top, std menu missing wtf, etc etc) that I'm considering something KDE-based next.

Yeah, I think Unity happened because of Gnome 3? Gnome 2 EOLed and Canonical didn’t like Gnome 3.

Unity happened mostly because Canonical was betting on convergence - which neither Gnome2 nor Gnome3 were practical for.

Supposedly, it’s also super nice on mobile and tablet, I didn’t get a chance to try.

If you want gnome 2, Mint is still maintaining it as MATE and it’s in the Ubuntu repositories.

Re: The Need for Stable Foundations in Software Development

#30

Post by beagle3 »

lmm wrote: post #2

Software development just isn't mature enough yet. A bug-free, stable version of an IDE from 10 years ago would be much less pleasant to work with than the flaky version with all the features that have been invented in the intervening years.

Visual c++ 6 circa 1998 was the pinnacle of responsive IDEs, and was more responsive in 2000 on 2000 hardware than the the visual studio 2013 o last used in 2015 - are new versions any better, or so you still wait a couple of seconds when pressing “run” just for the IDE to figure out that no compiling needs to be done?
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