Deconstructing K&R C Is Dead (2015)

I am one of the many stalwarts whose bookshelf contains a prominent copy of K&R C. But over the last 10 years or so I find myself referring to it less and less often. It's a huge problem that it stopped at the second edition. The 2nd ed was great in 1999. It is not great in 2016, it is only good.

> "You're right, but you're wrong that their code is bad." I cannot fathom how a group of people who are supposedly so intelligent and geared toward rational thought can hold in their head the idea that I can be wrong, and also right at the same time.

Zed, you're right, period. But I think you probably just hurt people's feelings because they revere Kernighan and Ritchie and this is one prominent item of their legacy.

> But C? C's dead. It's the language for old programmers who want to debate section A.6.2 paragraph 4 of the undefined behavior of pointers. Good riddance. I'm going to go learn Go (or Rust, or Swift, or anything else).

Amen. The union of those three are likely to address all use cases that C handled in the past.

BTW the blog post would be clearer if titled: " 'Deconstructing K&R C' is dead". Gotta love mixing up C with natural language operator precedence ambiguity. :)

> I cannot help old programmers.

Unfortunate he uses this categorization. The problem is a mindset that can exist in any generation.

Low level languages are tough. Gaining a mastery of C does require knowing quite a few strange rules and quirks and it's certainly a bit harder than learning Python. The C FAQ does a good job of illustrating some of the more confusing parts. Sure, I wish I could write Go instead, but that isn't going to happen on the many embedded systems I work on.

This is a rather strange and insulting article. I'm not sure why Zed can't help "old programmers" nor do I understand why he's angered that individuals know about undefined behavior in C. Is there any background to this or did he have the misfortune of being insulted on IRC?

Edit -- I googled for a bit and discovered this was in response to someone doing a pretty good job technically reviewing the book for free! http://hentenaar.com/dont-learn-c-the-wrong-way Perhaps the title was a bit inflammatory.

Zed's rebuttal is at https://zedshaw.com/2015/09/28/taking-down-tim-hentenaar/ and is a great example of how not to react to constructive criticism. My favorite part is his safercopy function and the lack of size_t.

And finally, to leave us all with a quote from Zed's rebuttal:

"Over this next week I’m going to systematically take down more of my detractors as I’ve collected a large amount of information on them, their actual skill levels, and how they treat beginners. Stay tuned for more."

Wow.

This is obviously a bitter rant, and devolves into uncomfortably ageist territory about halfway through.

I do agree that we should be moving away from C and C++, though. It's pretty simple, really: C was a pretty good language in 1978. We didn't know a lot of things in 1978 that we do now in 2016. It now makes sense to revisit those decisions in light of nearly 40 years of practice. The so-called "PL Renaissance" has given us a whole host of new languages which have steadily chipped away at the dominance of C and C++, and I think this is a healthy trend that ought to continue.

Maybe this made Zed feel better, but communicates almost nothing to any outside reader.

Not a single actual quote from any of his detractors, for the reader to judge for him or her self if their criticisms have any validity.

The categorical declaration of "I cannot help old programmers," without providing the evidence he has for this claim. Lots of name calling, though.

No link to the original content, to determine for ourselves whether or not it was fair to K&R's work.

I suppose Zed just meant this to be personally cathartic, and didn't realize he posted it on a public web site where other people can read it?