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I'll give shit about #1 when someone invents a time machine and prevents Java from existing. #2 is a great reason to learn Latin but the "influence of C" is id

I'll give shit about #1 when someone invents a time machine and prevents Java from existing. #2 is a great reason to learn Latin but the "influence of C" is identical to the influence of Fortran or Pascal or Algol and of equivalent magnitude to (what evolved into) Common Lisp or Scheme. And #4 is true eventually but it only matters when the software is broken.

notacoward 9y ago
Well, that's a better answer than I was responding to. I think I disagree a bit on your response to #2, though. Sure, other languages have also contributed mightily to the design of later languages. Some of them might have contributed more than C. OTOH, they haven't contributed nearly as much to the design of libraries and runtimes that are also important for a working engineer to understand. Programs written in any language are loaded into memory in a manner designed to accommodate C. The primary interface between userspace code written in any language and the kernel is via direct syscalls or libc, which were likewise designed with C's needs in mind. When those APIs do change, it's the C definitions that change and other languages are left on their own to parse the new definitions. So it's true that other languages have been just as influential from a computer scientist's perspective, but from a working engineer's perspective no other language comes close.
marssaxman 9y ago
When is the software not broken? The software is always broken while we're working on it, or we'd have shipped it already, and moved on to the next thing we need to break so we can improve on it - that's the nature of the job.
- Avshalom 9y ago
  On one hand yes on the other hand in interest of being pithy I did not say: even when software written in C is broken you're going to need more than a couple semesters of class or a couple months of use to actually fix the C underpinnings of pygtk.
banku_brougham 9y ago
Hey! FORTRAN isnt bad at all so...
jftuga 9y ago
Yes, because that's what I am going to do when/if I build a time machine.

notacoward 9y ago

Well, that's a better answer than I was responding to. I think I disagree a bit on your response to #2, though. Sure, other languages have also contributed mightily to the design of later languages. Some of them might have contributed more than C. OTOH, they haven't contributed nearly as much to the design of libraries and runtimes that are also important for a working engineer to understand. Programs written in any language are loaded into memory in a manner designed to accommodate C. The primary interface between userspace code written in any language and the kernel is via direct syscalls or libc, which were likewise designed with C's needs in mind. When those APIs do change, it's the C definitions that change and other languages are left on their own to parse the new definitions. So it's true that other languages have been just as influential from a computer scientist's perspective, but from a working engineer's perspective no other language comes close.

marssaxman 9y ago

When is the software not broken? The software is always broken while we're working on it, or we'd have shipped it already, and moved on to the next thing we need to break so we can improve on it - that's the nature of the job.

Avshalom 9y ago
On one hand yes on the other hand in interest of being pithy I did not say: even when software written in C is broken you're going to need more than a couple semesters of class or a couple months of use to actually fix the C underpinnings of pygtk.

banku_brougham 9y ago

Hey! FORTRAN isnt bad at all so...

jftuga 9y ago

Yes, because that's what I am going to do when/if I build a time machine.