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Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

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Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#231

Post by oconnor663 »

Const-me wrote: post #227
oconnor663 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like one of Const-me's objections is that Rust data structures like HashMap don't document a lot of guarantees about when they would and wouldn't invalidate unsafe interior pointers. That said, for Vec in particular, Rust actually makes a ton of guarantees about its layout (more that C++ std::vector I think): https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/vec/struct.Vec.html

Correct. While vectors are comparable, C++ also guarantees a lot about the rest of the containers. E.g. unordered associative containers never expire pointers to keys or values. Linked lists never expire pointers nor iterators. In C++ I can create an efficient LRU cache in a dozen lines of code, combining list with unordered_map ::iterator}> (this implies tKey is not an int, otherwise list is more efficient). Rust’s…

Thanks for the example -- it was hard for me to picture what was going on before. I wonder if the unstable "Placer" APIs will make the standard LinkedList more capable of this sort of thing, but I'm not really familiar with them. Still, I suspect it'll always require `unsafe`.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#232

Post by pjmlp »

pcwalton wrote: post #98
wahern wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article helps to explain why C was able to leverage network effects so well. Neither C nor Unix came out of the gate in a dominating position. Indeed, it's arguably only in the past 20 years that it clearly dominated. Fortran, Pascal, and a bevy of other languages were at times much more widespread and influential. Even today C isn't the most used language. And yet it's influence continues to be outsized.…

C wasn't useless and unsafe at the time it became dominant. It was quite state-of-the-art at the time. We've just learned more about what works well and what doesn't in programming languages since 1978, which is why C is no longer as dominant as it once was.

Hoare did not think like that.

"Many years later we asked our customers whether they wished us to provide an option to switch off these checks in the interests of efficiency on production runs. Unanimously, they urged us not to--they already knew how frequently subscript errors occur on production runs where failure to detect them could be disastrous. I note with fear and horror that even in 1980, language designers and users have not learned this lesson. In any respectable branch of engineering, failure to observe such elementary precautions would have long been against the law."

This was in 1981, and "language designers and users have not learned this lesson." was a jab at C.

Also Xerox and ETHZ were busy using safer systems programming languages.

ESPOL and NEWP, already using UNSAFE blocks were the state of the art systems programing in the 60's.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#233

Post by pjmlp »

bsder wrote: post #220
Volt wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that there are these other languages with the same properties means that predictability isn't the real reason, right? It's that it also is sparse in its specification and easy to implement a compiler for.

Please name those languages. I'm serious.

Ada, Modula-2, Pascal dialects, Algol 68, PL/M, PL/8, PL/S, NEWP...

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#234

Post by pjmlp »

bsder wrote: post #225
fulafel wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to link to pjmlp's comment who knows more about these: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14700251#14701140 I was more referring to the historical perspective of how C became popular, many have fallen by the wayside. Though there are certainly current alternatives to C besides those on TIOBE. Also there are real-time extensions to current GC'd languages like Java. (Though standard C isn't very predictable…

And, with the exception of Ada and Pascal, most of those language have been dead for at least 20 years--for various good reasons. And, please do remember that Apple switched away from Pascal when writing its operating systems in spite of an enormous code base. That's pretty damning--apparently C's "undefined behavior" didn't seem to matter. So, we're back to: the only alternative to C is Ada. > Though there are certa…

Apple switched away from Pascal due to UNIX market pressure.

http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...

http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_V...

And it was mostly to C++, not C.

Pascal is used daily for embedded system work by MikroElektronika customers using mikroPascal.

https://www.mikroe.com/mikropascal/

Any embedded application using Ada's Ravenscar profile, is an OS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenscar_profile

Additionally regarding Pascal, it was used to build Corvus Systems OS, MicroEngine and Solo OS.

Modula-2 was used to build Lilith and Delco's engine control units.

Mesa was used to create Xerox Star workstation.

ESPOL followed by NEWP was used for Burroughs B5500 in the 60's, nowadays still sold by Unisys as ClearPATH.

IBM created their RISC architecture OS using PL/8, with a compiler architecture that now re-resurfaced in LLVM.

OS/400, nowadays known as IBM i, was originally written in PL/I.

If it wasn't for UNIX's adoption, C would have joined many of those languages many moons ago.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#235

Post by pjmlp »

WalterBright wrote: post #121
mjw1007 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically because Microsoft picked C++ to be the main language for Windows development. Turbo Pascal was all very well but from Microsoft's point of view it was Not Invented Here.

C++ wasn't invented at Microsoft, either. The DOS C++ train had already left the station (Zortech C++) and Microsoft wasn't about to be left behind. (Zortech didn't invent C++, either, I don't want to give that impression.)

Actually if I remember correctly they were the very last PC C compiler vendor to add support for C++.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#236

Post by pjmlp »

Const-me wrote: post #169
josephg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't, and its a good idea. I wrote a bunch of C# code back in 2007 and I consistently enjoyed it. - It seems like a very pragmatic language choice. But if I'm going to move further away from the hardware in exchange for some language comforts & quality of life improvements, Elixir is the next language I want to try. I think both its concurrency primitives and immutability rules might be the right language-level…

> move further away from the hardware in exchange for some language comforts & quality of life improvements C# has descent native interop, i.e. [DllImport]. On Linux it imports from .so dynamic libraries. When you want to be closer to the hardware, because SIMD, or system calls not exposed to .NET, or integration with third-party C code, it usually works OK.

C# has some SIMD support since version 6.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#237

Post by pjmlp »

WalterBright wrote: post #114
iainmerrick wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. I happen to like C and think it has a lot going for it, but you're definitely right about this. The original Mac OS was written in Pascal (and assembly), not C. And Turbo Pascal was deservedly popular for a good while. In an alternate universe, Pascal rather than C could be the incumbent legacy…

Pascal suffered because its standard was woefully incomplete, and every implementation added mutually incompatible proprietary extensions. Turbo Pascal and all the TP developed code died when DOS died.

Turbo Pascal did not die, it was reborn as Delphi and only decreased its market share because many key developers ended up going to Microsoft, while Borland management decided enterprise customers were more important than indies.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#238

Post by pjmlp »

jmull wrote: post #120
iainmerrick wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no inherent benefit in C that, for example, a somewhat modified version of Pascal or Algol wouldn't have inherited. I happen to like C and think it has a lot going for it, but you're definitely right about this. The original Mac OS was written in Pascal (and assembly), not C. And Turbo Pascal was deservedly popular for a good while. In an alternate universe, Pascal rather than C could be the incumbent legacy…

You have to wonder, though, why the enduring big dogs of OSs are written in C. Classic Mac OS was written in Pascal, but it had to be scrapped and replaced.

Pressure from customers coming from UNIX, and Apple trying to get into UNIX with A/UX.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#239

Post by speedplane »

pjmlp wrote: post #237
WalterBright wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pascal suffered because its standard was woefully incomplete, and every implementation added mutually incompatible proprietary extensions. Turbo Pascal and all the TP developed code died when DOS died.

Turbo Pascal did not die, it was reborn as Delphi and only decreased its market share because many key developers ended up going to Microsoft, while Borland management decided enterprise customers were more important than indies.

What year did Borland make that call? I remember my HS programming class in the late 1990s used a Borland compiler and development environment. I don't recall it being "enterprisey" at the time. That being said I was in HS, and likely associated the word "enterprise" with starships more than big companies.

Re: Some Were Meant for C: The Endurance of an Unmanageable Language [pdf]

#240

Post by pjmlp »

WalterBright wrote: post #137
Koshkin wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The popularity of C had absolutely nothing to do with DOS. The most popular languages on early PCs were BASIC and Pascal. The popularity of C is linked to UNIX, from where it was brought to DOS. The far/near pointers did not play especially well with C view of pointers as integers of some fixed size. The 32-bit flat memory model made C programming somewhat closer to what it used to be in UNIX.

> The popularity of C had absolutely nothing to do with DOS. You might want to read popular programming magazines from the early 80s, and the attention given to C on DOS. (It was enormous.) At one time, I counted 30 C compilers available for DOS. What other platform came remotely close to that? > The most popular languages on early PCs were BASIC and Pascal. BASIC was indeed popular, but generally not for professiona…

As mentioned on some other thread, there was hardly any C being used outside UNIX during those days in Portugal.

It was all about Pascal, Basic, Assembly and of course xBase notably Clipper.

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