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It’s weird how I’ve managed to write so much reliable, production code at my work without “sum types” and “real generics”. Man, all those people who wrote OS ke
by PopsiclePete 8y ago
It’s weird how I’ve managed to write so much reliable, production code at my work without “sum types” and “real generics”. Man, all those people who wrote OS kernels in C or mobile apps for iOS in Objective-C need to just throw away their work - it’s all garbage written in non-real programming languages.
- ilovecaching 8y agoSo first of all, Apple invented a new language to replace Objective-C (they also added generics to Objective-C), you might have heard of it. Secondly, some kernels have already been written or partially written in C++ (the NT kernel for example). Of course, not many people are writing kernels, but those writing new kernels (fuschia, redox) are being written in either a mix of languages or a completely new language. Otherwise, older kernels like Linux were written decades ago in a very different landscape when other languages made little to no sense. Things have changed. So your comment is kind of unsubstantiated. And as I said, things have changed, and things will change. We can either do as you imply and keep using C and languages without "sum types" and "real generics", and keep creating security vulnerabilities and broken software, moving at a snails pace because we have poor methods of reuse, or we can aspire to build better tools to build better software. I am squarely in the latter camp, I think we should aspire to keep evolving.