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As an embedded engineer I can’t agree that C “has problems” because it treats you like a big boy with your big boy pants on. :)
by SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
As an embedded engineer I can’t agree that C “has problems” because it treats you like a big boy with your big boy pants on. :)
- ovao 8y agoWhich is a problem for developers who simply want to write code without having to reason about whether it’s safe to dereference something, and without having to worry about a simple oversight resulting in the programmatic equivalent of summoning Cthulhu.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago>a problem for developers who simply want to write code without having to reason Still not seeing the problem. Pointers aren’t magic and aren’t hard.
- pertymcpert 8y agoOh boy, trying to debug some miscompile because of a subtlety in aliasing rules would make me disagree.
- ovao 8y agoPointers, conceptually speaking, are not hard. Pointers, in practice, are hard. Even C-family compilers cannot safely reason about them in many (most) cases.
- fisherjeff 8y agoI work almost exclusively in embedded C and even I can’t agree with this. Just for starters, those two statements are not mutually exclusive.
- pertymcpert 8y agoAs a C compiler engineer I can assure you it has problems.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoDid I say C didn’t have problems? Or did a say it’s not a problem that C might allow you to do unsafe things?
- pertymcpert 8y agoI think so? “As an embedded engineer I can’t agree that C “has problems” because it treats you like a big boy with your big boy pants on. :)”
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoDo you know what “because” in that sentence means? Edit: Nah, that’s OK. Just downvote and scamper on. Make HN more like Reddit, that’s what this place needs!
- dang 8y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
- pertymcpert 8y agoWell I took it to mean that because you think it treats you as a "big boy" you don't think it has problems.
- pertymcpert 8y agoOh and I have no idea how to downvote on HN. Not that I care, but I don't see any downvote buttons.
- blub 8y agoThere is no such thing as "big boys" in software engineering, there's only humans which have certain cognitive weaknesses. C is really good at exploiting those, while at the same time giving programmers a feeling of power.
- speedplane 8y agoSo providing a feeling of power over the language and it's abilities is not a legitimate advantage of the language? Isn't that why everyone loves python, solving a complex problem in a handful of easily readable lines of code?
- blub 8y agoThe feeling of power is nice for the programmer, but it doesn't influence the technical capabilities of the language, which are deplorable safety-wise.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y agoDid you see the smiley face in my post that’s implied I’m kinda joking. Also... I’m a little concerned that your post has “we’re all equal” social justice vibe to it... which is silly. C is more powerful than because “safety features” aren’t there.... deplorable... LOL. You try going a day without using something programmed in C.
- pjmlp 8y agoEvery single day back when I was developing software for ZX Spectrum, Amiga and MS-DOS, before UNIX's influence took over the industry and forced us into dealing with C. Thankfully there was already C++ for those of us that wouldn't move into such a limited language versus what something like Turbo Pascal 6.0 for MS-DOS was already capable of, feature wise.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago