Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I stopped everything and started writing C again

kmx.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 475 posts

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#261

Post by moron4hire »

ryukoposting wrote: post #62
hehbot wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Not really. Rustup only ships a limited number of toolchains, with some misses that (for me) are real head-scratchers. i686-unknown-none, for example. Can't get it from rustup. I'm sure there's a way to roll your own toolchain, but Rust's docs might as well tell you to piss up a rope for how much they talk about that. Why is this important? C is the lingua franca of digital infrastructure. Whether that's due to merit…

> C is the lingua franca of digital infrastructure

Is it, though? It feels more like how the French saw the French language as "the" language of the world, by basically discounting as unimportant everywhere that didn't use French.

Ok, no, yeah, I see it now. The Lingua Franca is right

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#262

Post by maleldil »

sestep wrote: post #151
kelnos wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Rust is harder to learn, but once you grok it, I don't think it's harder to use, or at least to use correctly. It's hard to write correct C because the standard tooling doesn't give you much help beyond `-Wall`. When I say Rust is harder to use (even after learning it decently well), what I mean is that it's still easier to write a pile of C code and get it to compile than it is to write a pile of Rust code…

If you're using VS Code then you can add `"rust-analyzer.check.command": "clippy"` to your `settings.json`. I assume there's a similar setting for rust-analyzer in other editors.

Neovim:

    require("lspconfig").rust_analyzer.setup({
        settings = {
            ["rust-analyzer"] = {
                checkOnSave = {
                    command = "clippy",
                    allFeatures = true,
                },
            },
        },
    })

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#263

Post by maleldil »

kstrauser wrote: post #154
kelnos wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Rust is harder to learn, but once you grok it, I don't think it's harder to use, or at least to use correctly. It's hard to write correct C because the standard tooling doesn't give you much help beyond `-Wall`. When I say Rust is harder to use (even after learning it decently well), what I mean is that it's still easier to write a pile of C code and get it to compile than it is to write a pile of Rust code…

That's a fair distinction. Basically, it's easier to write C that compiles than Rust that compiles, but it's harder to write correct C than correct Rust. Regarding Clippy, you can also crank it up with `cargo clippy -- -Wclippy::pedantic`. Some of the advice at that level gets a little suspect. Don't just blindly follow it. It offers some nice suggestions though, like: warning: long literal lacking separators --> src…

You can also add #![warn(clippy::all, clippy::pedantic)] to your main.rs/lib.rs file to get those lints project-wide.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#264

Post by gtirloni »

samiv wrote: post #176
kelnos wrote: post #127

I'm kinda in the opposite camp. After doing a bunch of VB in my tweens and teens, I learned Java, C, and C++ in college, settling on mostly C for personal and professional projects. I became a core developer of Xfce and worked on that for 5 years. Then I moved into backend development, where I was doing all Java, Scala, and Python. It was... dare I say... easy! Sure, these kinds of languages bring with them other pro…

The biggest problem with C is that doesn't even have enough features to help you build the features and abstractions you need and want. For example with C++ the language offers enough functionality that you can create abstractions at any level, from low level bit manipulation to high level features such as automatic memory management, high level data objects etc. With C you can never escape the low level details. Cur…

Of course you can. It's quite the opposite actually. The downside is that in C you have to code a bunch of abstractions _yourself_. See how large projects like the Linux kernel make extensive use of macros to implement an object system.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#265

Post by mountainriver »

kstrauser wrote: post #144
kelnos wrote: post #127

I'm kinda in the opposite camp. After doing a bunch of VB in my tweens and teens, I learned Java, C, and C++ in college, settling on mostly C for personal and professional projects. I became a core developer of Xfce and worked on that for 5 years. Then I moved into backend development, where I was doing all Java, Scala, and Python. It was... dare I say... easy! Sure, these kinds of languages bring with them other pro…

I think Rust is harder to learn , but once you grok it, I don't think it's harder to use , or at least to use correctly. It's hard to write correct C because the standard tooling doesn't give you much help beyond `-Wall`. Rust's normal error messages are delightfully helpful. For example, I just wrote some bad code and got: --> src/main.rs:45:34 | 45 | actions.append(&mut func(opt.selected)); | ---- ^^^^^^^^^^^^ expe…

Agree, Rust is quite hard to learn, but now that I know it I have a hard time writing anything else. It really gives you the best of a lot of worlds.

Granted I can still crank out a python program faster, that kinda works but god forbid you need to scale it or use any sort of concurrency at all.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#266

Post by gblargg »

defrost wrote: post #246
kelnos wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen you make these kinds of comments before on other articles. Please stop. Not everyone is perfect and can forevermore avoid making any mistakes. I strongly suspect your opinion of your skill here is overinflated. Even if it isn't, and you really are that good, everyone cannot be in the top 0.00001% of all programmers out there, so your suggestion to "simply" learn not to make mistakes is useless. This all jus…

He's not making a comment about everyone , it's a specific comment about how often long time C programmers make basic mistakes after a million SLOC or so. In this instance Walter is correct - the mistakes he listed are very rarely made by experienced C programmers, just as ballet dancers rarely trip over their own feet walking down a pavement. The problem of those errors being commonplace in those that are barely fiv…

I'd imagine the main way one reduces instances of these mistakes is to restrict resource ownership into certain patterns which have a clear place for freeing, and rules that ensure it's always reached, and only once.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#267

Post by defrost »

gblargg wrote: post #266
defrost wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not making a comment about everyone , it's a specific comment about how often long time C programmers make basic mistakes after a million SLOC or so. In this instance Walter is correct - the mistakes he listed are very rarely made by experienced C programmers, just as ballet dancers rarely trip over their own feet walking down a pavement. The problem of those errors being commonplace in those that are barely fiv…

I'd imagine the main way one reduces instances of these mistakes is to restrict resource ownership into certain patterns which have a clear place for freeing, and rules that ensure it's always reached, and only once.

There are many approaches depending on the type of program or suite of programs being built.

Always pairing the creation of free() code and functions with every malloc() is one discipline.

Another, for a class of C utilities, is to never free() at all .. "compute anticipated resource limits early, malloc and open pipes in advance, process data stream and exit when done" works for a body of cases.

In large C projects of times past it's often the case that resource management, string handling, etc are isolated and handled in dedicated sub sections that resemble the kinds of safe handling methods baked into modern 'safe' languges.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#268

Post by Ygg2 »

kelnos wrote: post #137
Ygg2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rust is a much more complex language than C Feature wise, yes. C forces you to keep a lot of irreducible complexity in your head. > Rust has a much, much slower compiler than pretty much any language out there True. But it doesn't matter much in my opinion. A decent PC should be able to grind any Rust project in few seconds. > Rust applications are sometimes Sometimes is a weasel word. C is sometimes slower than Ja…

> A decent PC should be able to grind any Rust project in few seconds. That is demonstrably false, unless your definition of "decent PC" is something that costs $4000. I love Rust, but saying misleading (at best) things about build times is not a way to evangelize.

> That is demonstrably false, unless your definition of "decent PC" is something that costs $4000.

How is it demonstrably false? I'm on 5900x and Rust compilation speed was never an issue for me.

More like $1500. $500 for 9950x. $200 for Mobo, $200 for memory and $100 for 1Tb ssd and power supply for $100. Coolers and case by desire. GPU optional.

Only way to get to $4000 in a PC is you are buying fancy components or you bought latest xx90 card.

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#269

Post by duskwuff »

kqr wrote: post #112
enriquto wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try doing C with a garbage collector ... it's very liberating. > Do `#include ` then just use `GC_malloc()` instead of `malloc()` and never free. Even more liberating (and dangerous!): do not even malloc, just use variable length-arrays: void f(float *y, float *x, int n) { float t[n]; // temporary array, destroyed at the end of scope ... } This style forces you to alloc the memory at the outermost scope where it is…

At first I really liked this idea, but then I realised the size of stack frames is quite limited, isn't it? So this would work for small data but perhaps not big data.

It isn't a practical pattern for anything beyond the most trivial applications. Consider what this would look like if you tried to write a text editor, for instance - if a user types a new line of text, where is the memory for that allocated?

Re: I stopped everything and started writing C again

#270

Post by jandrewrogers »

eikenberry wrote: post #157
kelnos wrote: post #127

I'm kinda in the opposite camp. After doing a bunch of VB in my tweens and teens, I learned Java, C, and C++ in college, settling on mostly C for personal and professional projects. I became a core developer of Xfce and worked on that for 5 years. Then I moved into backend development, where I was doing all Java, Scala, and Python. It was... dare I say... easy! Sure, these kinds of languages bring with them other pro…

Have you looked at Zig? It is often termed a modern C where Rust is the modern C++. Seems like a good fit.

Rust is not a modern C++, their core models are pretty different. Both Rust and C++ can do things the other can’t do. C++ is a more focused on low-level hyper-optimized systems programming, Rust is a bit higher level and has stronger guardrails but with performance closer to a classic systems language.

I do think Zig is a worthy successor to C and isn’t trying to be C++. I programmed in C for a long time and Zig has a long list of sensible features I wish C had back then. If C had been like Zig I might never have left C.

Post reply on HN