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Two types of C programmers

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Re: Two types of C programmers

#31

Post by pjmlp »

pornel wrote: post #26
up2isomorphism wrote: post #24

“My perception of the second sort of C programmer is that if they've moved to any more recent mainstream language, it's probably Rust.” If you are the first type, you likely get the second type’s taste wrong. Rust is very very different from C both in terms of syntax and philosophy.

Rust is from a different language family, but I think it still fits a taste of "low-level control, not OOP, not C++". I know many people see "complex with angle brackets" and equate Rust more with C++, but I disagree and think it's still closer to C — I can convert C libraries 1:1 to Rust, but C++ libraries hit an impedance mismatch and are really hard to rustify.

The use of macros and compiler plugins is pretty much closer to C++.

Re: Two types of C programmers

#32

Post by winrid »

williamcotton wrote: post #23

C with libdispatch and clang blocks is the most fun I’ve had programming in quite some time! Here’s a web framework (complete with ORM) modeled on ExpressJS written in C: https://github.com/williamcotton/express-c The finished product is There’s also a lot of examples of the (basically required) support tooling like Valgrind, AdSan, etc. Check it out!

It looks cool. The DB library is appreciated. However, you would get about the same idle memory and docker size with Go's Fibers framework :)

Re: Two types of C programmers

#33

Post by jesse__ »

pjmlp wrote: post #16

Some people like to workship whatever the UNIX founders have done, yet they miss that for Plan 9 and Inferno, they also decided to go with automatic memory management languages. While Alef failed, Limbo's design with GC was considered a revisit from what was missing from Alef. They also miss that lint was considered a must have tool for safer C code, introduced in 1979, and that Dennis actually proposed fat pointers…

> yet they miss that for Plan 9 and Inferno, they also decided to go with automatic memory management languages

And which of these three operating systems won?

Re: Two types of C programmers

#34

Post by bluejekyll »

sparkie wrote: post #5

I'd consider myself the former: I use C because it's the only viable option for what I'm doing - but most of the time it's nothing to do with C itself, but the various extensions and builtins of GCC. It's the inline asm, the control of registers, placement of code and data, control of inlining, etc, which are missing from all of the C "replacements". The replacements assume you are building a user application on top…

Out of curiosity, have you looked at the ASM inlining options in Rust? https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/inline-assembly.html

Re: Two types of C programmers

#35

Post by infamouscow »

bluejekyll wrote: post #34
sparkie wrote: post #5

I'd consider myself the former: I use C because it's the only viable option for what I'm doing - but most of the time it's nothing to do with C itself, but the various extensions and builtins of GCC. It's the inline asm, the control of registers, placement of code and data, control of inlining, etc, which are missing from all of the C "replacements". The replacements assume you are building a user application on top…

Out of curiosity, have you looked at the ASM inlining options in Rust? https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/inline-assembly.html

Rust's inline assembly and configurable targets sets the standard going forward.

I just wish their trademark policy relaxed some of the non-trademark related requirements making it a deal-breaker.

Re: Two types of C programmers

#36

Post by _darkmatterdev_ »

I consider myself the latter who just hasn’t had the time to look into Rust or Zig extensively. But also, I work in safety critical application and it would be hard to shift the organization over to Rust for a lot of reasons, both technological and political.

Re: Two types of C programmers

#37

Post by pjmlp »

sparkie wrote: post #5

I'd consider myself the former: I use C because it's the only viable option for what I'm doing - but most of the time it's nothing to do with C itself, but the various extensions and builtins of GCC. It's the inline asm, the control of registers, placement of code and data, control of inlining, etc, which are missing from all of the C "replacements". The replacements assume you are building a user application on top…

Unless that ABI is something like COM or WinRT.

Re: Two types of C programmers

#38

Post by cracrecry »

Why I love C?

In a word, simplicity. A language designed by a single person. I also did program a lot in CLisp, a language designed by committee, with more than 100 different flow control directives(and people often create their own).

I loved and love Lisp as a concept and tool, but hated CLisp complex design so badly. I programmed in Arc for a while because of that.

I have created my own C compiler and interpreter. Something impossible to do for a single person in C++(C++ is way more complicated).

I also love manual memory handling in C because it lets me create my own automatic local systems much more efficient than someone else's "one size fits all" aproach.

I have also programmed mac apps in Objective C and Swift, C++, java, javascript, Perl.

I program today mainly in four languages: C/C++, Python, Rust and Clojure.

With C it is so easy to create python modules. It is trivial to interoperate from C++ with C. Clojure is a Lisp that is simple, clean design, and you could interoperate with java objects. Rust has some advantages over C, but also disadvantages(it is too bloated).

Re: Two types of C programmers

#39

Post by johnny22 »

sparkie wrote: post #5

I'd consider myself the former: I use C because it's the only viable option for what I'm doing - but most of the time it's nothing to do with C itself, but the various extensions and builtins of GCC. It's the inline asm, the control of registers, placement of code and data, control of inlining, etc, which are missing from all of the C "replacements". The replacements assume you are building a user application on top…

We have entire OSes built in rust, so that' not the case there. That's both for mcus and desktop machines and beyond.

Re: Two types of C programmers

#40

Post by WalterBright »

cracrecry wrote: post #38

Why I love C? In a word, simplicity. A language designed by a single person. I also did program a lot in CLisp, a language designed by committee, with more than 100 different flow control directives(and people often create their own). I loved and love Lisp as a concept and tool, but hated CLisp complex design so badly. I programmed in Arc for a while because of that. I have created my own C compiler and interpreter.…

> impossible to do for a single person in C++(C++ is way more complicated)

I wrote a fully compliant C++98 compiler (Digital Mars C++).

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