4 ms·

Have you got an example of a C replacement that was actually better than C, got as far as Zig and is now abandoned? I can't think of one. I've been look for a b

Have you got an example of a C replacement that was actually better than C, got as far as Zig and is now abandoned? I can't think of one. I've been look for a better C for 15 years and Zig is the best candidate I've found. I don't think DasbetterC counts, since it is a side effort to the greater goals of D.

pjmlp 8y ago
Turbo Pascal, Object Pascal and Modula-2 would be such examples. Their sin was not being bundled with an OS, originally distributed with source code by a symbolic price.
- lpu4o74p 8y ago
  Wirth didn't produce anything usable before Oberon (which is garbage collected, so outside of the C niche.)
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Modula-2 was quite usable and Mac OS/Lisa Object Pascal was designed with collaboration from Wirth. As for Oberon, Astrobe is still in business.
  - eterps 8y ago
    And yet despite of it doing everything that fits the niche http://www.projectoberon.com http://www.projectoberon.com :-)
- abainbridge 8y ago
  Interesting choices. They're all very old. I feel we must have learned something since the 1970s that could be used to improve a systems programming language. I don't really want to restart a flame war that was extinguished decades ago but Kernighan's critique of Pascal (http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html) is an interesting read today - if only because it reminds me how much simpler things were back then - no mention of memory safety or multi-threading. I have no knowledge of Object Pascal and Modula-2, so won't comment.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Kernighan's critique was very biased and he focused on plain ISO Pascal on purpose to get his point across. Cleverly not mentioning that many issues were fixed on ISO Extended Pascal and other dialects. Also that back then outside Bell Labs, most C compilers were actually dialects of the real thing, like Small C and RatC. So it was not like C wasn't without its portability issues outside UNIX. As for memory safety and multi-threading, check Concurrent Pascal and Solo OS from Per Brinch Hansen.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Cleverly not mentioning that many issues were fixed on ISO Extended Pascal and other dialects. Yes, Kernighan was “clever” in 1981 to ignore ISO Extended Pascal, a standard published in 1991. (I'm also not sure if there was ever more than one implementation of Extended Pascal, though Free Pascal claims it as a planned future feature.)
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        ISO Extended Pascal was an update taking into account existing language extensions. Many of them available in 1981 dialects
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Turbo Pascal Was not abandoned, it was rebranded to “Delphi” and is still around.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    True,but HN crowd tends to be allergic to the typical kind of customers nowadays targeted by Codegear.

pjmlp 8y ago

Turbo Pascal, Object Pascal and Modula-2 would be such examples. Their sin was not being bundled with an OS, originally distributed with source code by a symbolic price.

lpu4o74p 8y ago
Wirth didn't produce anything usable before Oberon (which is garbage collected, so outside of the C niche.)
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Modula-2 was quite usable and Mac OS/Lisa Object Pascal was designed with collaboration from Wirth. As for Oberon, Astrobe is still in business.
- eterps 8y ago
  And yet despite of it doing everything that fits the niche http://www.projectoberon.com http://www.projectoberon.com :-)
abainbridge 8y ago
Interesting choices. They're all very old. I feel we must have learned something since the 1970s that could be used to improve a systems programming language. I don't really want to restart a flame war that was extinguished decades ago but Kernighan's critique of Pascal (http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html http://www.lysator.liu.se/c/bwk-on-pascal.html) is an interesting read today - if only because it reminds me how much simpler things were back then - no mention of memory safety or multi-threading. I have no knowledge of Object Pascal and Modula-2, so won't comment.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Kernighan's critique was very biased and he focused on plain ISO Pascal on purpose to get his point across. Cleverly not mentioning that many issues were fixed on ISO Extended Pascal and other dialects. Also that back then outside Bell Labs, most C compilers were actually dialects of the real thing, like Small C and RatC. So it was not like C wasn't without its portability issues outside UNIX. As for memory safety and multi-threading, check Concurrent Pascal and Solo OS from Per Brinch Hansen.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Cleverly not mentioning that many issues were fixed on ISO Extended Pascal and other dialects. Yes, Kernighan was “clever” in 1981 to ignore ISO Extended Pascal, a standard published in 1991. (I'm also not sure if there was ever more than one implementation of Extended Pascal, though Free Pascal claims it as a planned future feature.)
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      ISO Extended Pascal was an update taking into account existing language extensions. Many of them available in 1981 dialects
dragonwriter 8y ago
> Turbo Pascal Was not abandoned, it was rebranded to “Delphi” and is still around.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  True,but HN crowd tends to be allergic to the typical kind of customers nowadays targeted by Codegear.