4 ms·

I feel like C is having a renaissance because of that. C is very conservative in adding new features, which makes it easy to get an understanding of the langua

I feel like C is having a renaissance because of that. C is very conservative in adding new features, which makes it easy to get an understanding of the language - nothing is hidden, when necessary you can derive everything you need to know about a piece of code from first principles. C compared to C++ feels like high school math compared to university math with all it's scary notations.

kerkeslager 8y ago
It's not just the notations, either. I'm not a particularly strong C programmer (I don't write it professionally, I write Python) but I've read documentation for the entire C standard library[1], for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_standard_library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_standard_library
Ar-Curunir 8y ago
I don't think this is true: what C leaves out in terms of language features , programmers have to reinvent or keep in their heads perpetually while writing code, leading to tons of gotchas.
- Too 8y ago
  Yep, to reuse the math analogy. C is like solving 3d geometric problems by manually aggregating endless lines of cos, sin and sqrt, instead of using vector mathematics where you can do the same with just a single line of matrix multiplication or a simple dot-product.
- lifthrasiir 8y ago
  In the other words, C standard library is not really small. It consists of a small mechanized portion and a much larger portion embedded in wetware, i.e. human mind. The second portion is very hard to update or fix, so the first portion keeps growing to cover all faults of the second.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    And POSIX plays the role of an additional runtime library.
pjmlp 8y ago
Where is that renaissance happening?!? Certainly not in the C compilers that have been ported to C++, the OSes that now push for C++ instead of C, automative standards that replaced C by C++14 as certified language, IoT platforms based on C++,...

kerkeslager 8y ago

It's not just the notations, either. I'm not a particularly strong C programmer (I don't write it professionally, I write Python) but I've read documentation for the entire C standard library[1], for example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_standard_library https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_standard_library

Ar-Curunir 8y ago

I don't think this is true: what C leaves out in terms of language features , programmers have to reinvent or keep in their heads perpetually while writing code, leading to tons of gotchas.

Too 8y ago
Yep, to reuse the math analogy. C is like solving 3d geometric problems by manually aggregating endless lines of cos, sin and sqrt, instead of using vector mathematics where you can do the same with just a single line of matrix multiplication or a simple dot-product.
lifthrasiir 8y ago
In the other words, C standard library is not really small. It consists of a small mechanized portion and a much larger portion embedded in wetware, i.e. human mind. The second portion is very hard to update or fix, so the first portion keeps growing to cover all faults of the second.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  And POSIX plays the role of an additional runtime library.

pjmlp 8y ago

Where is that renaissance happening?!? Certainly not in the C compilers that have been ported to C++, the OSes that now push for C++ instead of C, automative standards that replaced C by C++14 as certified language, IoT platforms based on C++,...