8 ms·

You have my solidarity, but I do not see C having a resurgence. Can share horror stories of expensive hires with MSc/PhD degrees, and years of experience havin

You have my solidarity, but I do not see C having a resurgence. Can share horror stories of expensive hires with MSc/PhD degrees, and years of experience having a fright of their lifetime when they see real world C.

pjmlp 6y ago
So are you planning to rewrite all those UNIX clones in something else? Azure Sphere, Microsoft's paragon of IoT security, only allows for C. Those expensive MSc/PhD should just complain to their universities for not providing a proper systems programming classes.
- baybal2 6y ago
  I clearly need people who can do above helloworld level in C. For many places, there are clearly no alternative to C. The humongous open codebase of high quality C code, exceeding every other language, is also not going anywhere. The situation is, shortly speaking, "no alternative to doing it in C, but we cannot do it in C because of some purely non-technical constraint." And the situation is very common I feel. Chipmakers with billions of cash free to throw on RnD can't make any passable Linux kernel work. Google Chrome team must be employing best C++ hackers on the market, and yet.... and the story goes on like this. The relative overabundance of webdev/java people hides the the fact that we are not only not gaining developers in conventional programming, but losing them fast to age, career change, or them returning back to home countries in case of labour migrants.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Those Java people also need to be at home with the low level concepts, if they are to do any usable work from what is coming from Panama. Likewise those Webdevs might just brush up their skills for WebAssembly. At the end of the day it doesn't matter if one is using D, Rust, Swift, Java, C#, Rust, C++, Zig, FreePascal, CUDA, Open... instead of C. The system programming concepts are the same, and it all boils down to education. As for lousy candidates, I get them in any language.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      Can't say them not knowing them at all, or them being outright lousy. When it come to CS fundamentals, algorithmics, most were better than me, who never studied CS academically. This was the reason we ever took interest in them. It's just you cannot compensate for training, and experience with overall feel of skill. You can hire an ACM olympian, and the guy will still loose it unless he did C professionally for 3-4 years.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        In my engineering degree doing stuff like B-Trees with its own i-node management module in C, validate against unit tests written by the professor, were requirements just to qualify for the data structures exam. Someone lousy in low level coding won't go through such a curriculum, https://www.di.fct.unl.pt/en/education/integrated-master-computer-science/study-program https://www.di.fct.unl.pt/en/education/integrated-master-com... Again, a matter of teaching quality.
FpUser 6y ago
Any other "real world" software can be ugly and can be beautifully written in any language, including C (except ones where being cryptic is by design). Basic C can be picked up in very short time. there is nothing to be frightened about. When I first laid my hands on C I wrote working software (keyboard driver for DOS) in a first day as a learning exercise. Not sure what other than incompetence as a programmers is causing your expensive PhDs "fright of their lifetime".
- baybal2 6y ago
  > Not sure what other than incompetence as a programmers is causing your expensive PhDs "fright of their lifetime". Memory management, handwritten loops, pointers everywhere, absence of ready made data structures, error handling (or its absence,) epopeia with C strings, sanitizing inputs, and nausea from the slightest smell of SIMD, or basic binary hackery to begin with.
  - FpUser 6y ago
    Those are needed for the tasks C was made to handle: complete control over everything being a primary one. If you do not need those tasks you do not need C. And if you do then get used to it.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Odd how well rust seems to manage to avoid them. C was amazing when it was introduced, but is as archaic as COBOL today. We are stuck with it because of legacy.
      - FpUser 6y ago
        >"C was amazing when it was introduced" It was not amazing. It was decent particular tool for particular job. That was all about it. Same thing about Rust. There are no silver bullets laying around.
        6y ago

pjmlp 6y ago

So are you planning to rewrite all those UNIX clones in something else? Azure Sphere, Microsoft's paragon of IoT security, only allows for C. Those expensive MSc/PhD should just complain to their universities for not providing a proper systems programming classes.

baybal2 6y ago
I clearly need people who can do above helloworld level in C. For many places, there are clearly no alternative to C. The humongous open codebase of high quality C code, exceeding every other language, is also not going anywhere. The situation is, shortly speaking, "no alternative to doing it in C, but we cannot do it in C because of some purely non-technical constraint." And the situation is very common I feel. Chipmakers with billions of cash free to throw on RnD can't make any passable Linux kernel work. Google Chrome team must be employing best C++ hackers on the market, and yet.... and the story goes on like this. The relative overabundance of webdev/java people hides the the fact that we are not only not gaining developers in conventional programming, but losing them fast to age, career change, or them returning back to home countries in case of labour migrants.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Those Java people also need to be at home with the low level concepts, if they are to do any usable work from what is coming from Panama. Likewise those Webdevs might just brush up their skills for WebAssembly. At the end of the day it doesn't matter if one is using D, Rust, Swift, Java, C#, Rust, C++, Zig, FreePascal, CUDA, Open... instead of C. The system programming concepts are the same, and it all boils down to education. As for lousy candidates, I get them in any language.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    Can't say them not knowing them at all, or them being outright lousy. When it come to CS fundamentals, algorithmics, most were better than me, who never studied CS academically. This was the reason we ever took interest in them. It's just you cannot compensate for training, and experience with overall feel of skill. You can hire an ACM olympian, and the guy will still loose it unless he did C professionally for 3-4 years.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      In my engineering degree doing stuff like B-Trees with its own i-node management module in C, validate against unit tests written by the professor, were requirements just to qualify for the data structures exam. Someone lousy in low level coding won't go through such a curriculum, https://www.di.fct.unl.pt/en/education/integrated-master-computer-science/study-program https://www.di.fct.unl.pt/en/education/integrated-master-com... Again, a matter of teaching quality.

FpUser 6y ago

Any other "real world" software can be ugly and can be beautifully written in any language, including C (except ones where being cryptic is by design). Basic C can be picked up in very short time. there is nothing to be frightened about. When I first laid my hands on C I wrote working software (keyboard driver for DOS) in a first day as a learning exercise. Not sure what other than incompetence as a programmers is causing your expensive PhDs "fright of their lifetime".

baybal2 6y ago
> Not sure what other than incompetence as a programmers is causing your expensive PhDs "fright of their lifetime". Memory management, handwritten loops, pointers everywhere, absence of ready made data structures, error handling (or its absence,) epopeia with C strings, sanitizing inputs, and nausea from the slightest smell of SIMD, or basic binary hackery to begin with.
- FpUser 6y ago
  Those are needed for the tasks C was made to handle: complete control over everything being a primary one. If you do not need those tasks you do not need C. And if you do then get used to it.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Odd how well rust seems to manage to avoid them. C was amazing when it was introduced, but is as archaic as COBOL today. We are stuck with it because of legacy.
    - FpUser 6y ago
      >"C was amazing when it was introduced" It was not amazing. It was decent particular tool for particular job. That was all about it. Same thing about Rust. There are no silver bullets laying around.
      - 6y ago