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C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)

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Re: C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)

#31

Post by drnick1 »

munificent wrote: post #16
pizlonator wrote: post #7

It’s weird how whiny this post is. Like there’s zero intellectual curiosity about why C got this way, and why C gets to be the foundation for how systems software is written. I could write a whole essay about why, but now isn’t the time. I’m just going to enjoy the fact that TFA and the author don’t get it.

> why C gets to be the foundation for how systems software is written. Is there an answer here more interesting than "it's what Unix and Windows were written in, so that's how programs talked to the OS, and once you have an interface, it's impossible to change"?

Yes and no. Clearly what you said is true, but the more profound reason is that C just minimally reflects how computers work. The rest is just convention.

Re: C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)

#33

Post by exidy »

pizlonator wrote: post #7

It’s weird how whiny this post is. Like there’s zero intellectual curiosity about why C got this way, and why C gets to be the foundation for how systems software is written. I could write a whole essay about why, but now isn’t the time. I’m just going to enjoy the fact that TFA and the author don’t get it.

The author is upfront about their goals and motivations and explicitly acknowledges that other concerns exist. Calling it whiny is ungracious -- the author is letting some very human frustration peek through in their narrative.

Not everything has to be written with all the warmth and humanity of a UN subcommittee interim report on widget standardisation.

Re: C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)

#35

Post by noosphr »

okanat wrote: post #6
nacozarina wrote: post #3

None of the alternatives have stability. What was exemplary & idiomatic rust pre-pandemic would be churlish & rejected now and the toolchain use would be different anyway. Carpenters, plumbers, masons & electricians work on houses 3-300 yrs old, navigate the range of legacy styles & tech they encounter, and predictably get good outcomes. Only C has, yet, given use that level of serviceability. C99, baby, why pay more…

The replacement has already happened. It is HTTP and JSON for 99% of the software developed today. The reason C stayed has multiple reasons but most obvious ones are for me are: - People just stopped caring about operating systems research and systems programming after ~2005. Actual engineering implementations of the concepts largely stopped after the second half of 90s. Most developers moved on to making websites or…

I'd never thought I'd see the day that anyone praises COM.

Re: C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)

#37

Post by Ygg2 »

drnick1 wrote: post #29
mjg59 wrote: post #19

I really don't understand why people keep misunderstanding this post so badly. It's not a complaint about C as a programming language. It's a complaint that, due to so much infrastructure being implemented in C, anyone who wants to interact with that infrastructure is forced to deal with some of the constraints of C. C has moved beyond merely being a programming language and become the most common interface for in-pr…

I don't see that as a problem. C has been the bedrock of computing since the 1970s because it is the most minimal way of speaking to the hardware in a mostly portable way. Anything can be done in C, from writing hardware drivers, to GUI applications and scientific computing. In fact I deplore the day people stopped using C for desktop applications and moved to bloated, sluggish Web frameworks to program desktop apps.…

> I don't see that as a problem.

It kinda is. Because it was made in the 1970s, and it shows (cough null-terminated strings uncough).

Or you know having a 64-bit wide integer. Reliably.

You did read the article, right?

Re: C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)

#38

Post by mjg59 »

drnick1 wrote: post #29
mjg59 wrote: post #19

I really don't understand why people keep misunderstanding this post so badly. It's not a complaint about C as a programming language. It's a complaint that, due to so much infrastructure being implemented in C, anyone who wants to interact with that infrastructure is forced to deal with some of the constraints of C. C has moved beyond merely being a programming language and become the most common interface for in-pr…

I don't see that as a problem. C has been the bedrock of computing since the 1970s because it is the most minimal way of speaking to the hardware in a mostly portable way. Anything can be done in C, from writing hardware drivers, to GUI applications and scientific computing. In fact I deplore the day people stopped using C for desktop applications and moved to bloated, sluggish Web frameworks to program desktop apps.…

Ok you're still missing the point. This isn't about C being good or bad or suitable or unsuitable. It's about whether it's good that C has, through no deliberate set of choices, ended up embodying the interface that lets us build rust that can be called by go.

Re: C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)

#39

Post by sinnsro »

okanat wrote: post #6
nacozarina wrote: post #3

None of the alternatives have stability. What was exemplary & idiomatic rust pre-pandemic would be churlish & rejected now and the toolchain use would be different anyway. Carpenters, plumbers, masons & electricians work on houses 3-300 yrs old, navigate the range of legacy styles & tech they encounter, and predictably get good outcomes. Only C has, yet, given use that level of serviceability. C99, baby, why pay more…

The replacement has already happened. It is HTTP and JSON for 99% of the software developed today. The reason C stayed has multiple reasons but most obvious ones are for me are: - People just stopped caring about operating systems research and systems programming after ~2005. Actual engineering implementations of the concepts largely stopped after the second half of 90s. Most developers moved on to making websites or…

> It doesn't mean that people haven't tried or even succeeded. Android was successful in multiple fronts in replacing C. Its "intents" and low level interface description language for hardware interfaces are great replacement for C ABI. Windows' COM is also a good replacement that gets rid of language dependence. There are still newer OSes try like Redox or Fuchsia.

I am not sure I buy this from a system perspective, especially when taking this[1] into consideration.

______

1. Alexis King's reply to "Why do common Rust packages depend on C code?". Link: https://langdev.stackexchange.com/a/3237

Re: C isn't a programming language anymore (2022)

#40

Post by chasil »

okanat wrote: post #6
nacozarina wrote: post #3

None of the alternatives have stability. What was exemplary & idiomatic rust pre-pandemic would be churlish & rejected now and the toolchain use would be different anyway. Carpenters, plumbers, masons & electricians work on houses 3-300 yrs old, navigate the range of legacy styles & tech they encounter, and predictably get good outcomes. Only C has, yet, given use that level of serviceability. C99, baby, why pay more…

The replacement has already happened. It is HTTP and JSON for 99% of the software developed today. The reason C stayed has multiple reasons but most obvious ones are for me are: - People just stopped caring about operating systems research and systems programming after ~2005. Actual engineering implementations of the concepts largely stopped after the second half of 90s. Most developers moved on to making websites or…

In pieces of my code, I need to call setuserid() to manage some of the security that I designed in 2010.

There was no Rust at that point, and I used the most basic tool that could do it.

Could I have done this in Java with gymnastics of JNI, linking C into the JRE?

Definite maybe.

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