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Nice post. There are still to many C/C++ wannabes who think C is an awesome language and their are awesome hardcore programmers. If they are challenged to code

Nice post. There are still to many C/C++ wannabes who think C is an awesome language and their are awesome hardcore programmers. If they are challenged to code something, it's highly probable that flaws will come up.

stinos 9y ago
There are still to many C/C++ wannabes There are still too many people using the term C/C++ :] It never really was a thing, even in the beginning (I mean, just take e.g. destruction at scope exit: that alone makes it a very different language) and now even less with the new standards. Anyway: a language can be considered awesome by people, despite it's flaws. Always has been, never will change, as there will probably never be languages without any flaws. (e.g. I think Python is awesome, others don't ever cease summing up it's flaws, I couldn't care less as it gets stuff done in particular situations). Just like it's inevitable every single programmer, including you, writes flawed code from time to time, challenged or not.
- irundebian 9y ago
  > as there will probably never be languages without any flaws Yes, but we can try to develop better language. Rust is such a try. And that's good. > Sure, but I don't belong to that fraction of programmers who think they write flawless code or develop a cult with old, error prone languages such as C. The important thing is that we are not discussing about programmers making mistakes, but about a language which is old and which is making mistakes easy. C proofed in sufficient cases that it belongs to the museum.
  - stinos 9y ago
    it belongs to the museum I agree that in C it's way easier to make mistakes than in e.g. Rust, but I don't agree that (or whatever other reason) is proof that it belongs in a museum. Take microPython for instance: it's a relatively young project written in C, it allows running a pretty complete Python 3 implementation on a variety of microprocessors as well as on PC/mac/... Suppose we put C in a museum, what do we use instead to achieve the same functionality?
- MaulingMonkey 9y ago
  I'm actually going to defend the term. For starters, the languages are in practice quite similar as used in many codebases (e.g. C++ codebases where they just don't use destruction at scope exit, have exceptions and RTTI disabled outright, and eschew modern features in favor of targeting older compilers, etc. - or C codebases where GNU extensions are used to get automatic cleanup at the end of scope!) Further, headers are routinely set up to be safe C and C++, with a few #ifdef __cplusplus extern "C"s to help manage name mangling. And I'm struggling to think of a significant codebase which I've actually shipped that was pure C++, rather than C++ with at minimum a few customizations to some third party C library, embedded as part of the same build (to say absolutely nothing of system libs.) I suppose you could argue it should in some cases be C/C++/Objective C/Objective C++/(C++/CX)/(C++/CLI)/...

stinos 9y ago

There are still to many C/C++ wannabes There are still too many people using the term C/C++ :] It never really was a thing, even in the beginning (I mean, just take e.g. destruction at scope exit: that alone makes it a very different language) and now even less with the new standards. Anyway: a language can be considered awesome by people, despite it's flaws. Always has been, never will change, as there will probably never be languages without any flaws. (e.g. I think Python is awesome, others don't ever cease summing up it's flaws, I couldn't care less as it gets stuff done in particular situations). Just like it's inevitable every single programmer, including you, writes flawed code from time to time, challenged or not.

irundebian 9y ago
> as there will probably never be languages without any flaws Yes, but we can try to develop better language. Rust is such a try. And that's good. > Sure, but I don't belong to that fraction of programmers who think they write flawless code or develop a cult with old, error prone languages such as C. The important thing is that we are not discussing about programmers making mistakes, but about a language which is old and which is making mistakes easy. C proofed in sufficient cases that it belongs to the museum.
- stinos 9y ago
  it belongs to the museum I agree that in C it's way easier to make mistakes than in e.g. Rust, but I don't agree that (or whatever other reason) is proof that it belongs in a museum. Take microPython for instance: it's a relatively young project written in C, it allows running a pretty complete Python 3 implementation on a variety of microprocessors as well as on PC/mac/... Suppose we put C in a museum, what do we use instead to achieve the same functionality?
MaulingMonkey 9y ago
I'm actually going to defend the term. For starters, the languages are in practice quite similar as used in many codebases (e.g. C++ codebases where they just don't use destruction at scope exit, have exceptions and RTTI disabled outright, and eschew modern features in favor of targeting older compilers, etc. - or C codebases where GNU extensions are used to get automatic cleanup at the end of scope!) Further, headers are routinely set up to be safe C and C++, with a few #ifdef __cplusplus extern "C"s to help manage name mangling. And I'm struggling to think of a significant codebase which I've actually shipped that was pure C++, rather than C++ with at minimum a few customizations to some third party C library, embedded as part of the same build (to say absolutely nothing of system libs.) I suppose you could argue it should in some cases be C/C++/Objective C/Objective C++/(C++/CX)/(C++/CLI)/...