3 ms·

Citing tiobe.com: "The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming la

Citing tiobe.com: "The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system." This and the fact that C is number one suggest something very wrong. While C really has a place in my heart, you should have very good reasons to use it when "starting to build a new software system".

nineteen999 6y ago
> you should have very good reasons to use it when "starting to build a new software system". And three of those very good reasons are: 1) you're writing a library and you'd like to make it usable from a number of other languages as well, the most popular of which are at least partially implemented in C or C++ themselves to some degree, eg. Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, Haskell etc. Writing said library in C (in particular) makes the library much more accessible from those languages. 2) the platform you're writing for is partially if not largely written in C or C++, the most popular of which are Windows, MacOS, Linux etc. So the toolchain/runtimes used to build the systems are already supported, extremely mature and well tested. 3) the platform you're writing for is especially space constrained (eg. embedded Linux), also fits the criteria for (2) above, and where performance may also be a factor due to reduced CPU/bus speed, availability of RAM and storage. For every interpreter or JIT compiler you want to add to those kind of systems for a higher level language, you can normally fit a larger number of C or C++ programs to implement your device's required functionality. There is far more years of effort required yet to overcome the inertia of the above than the average HN webdev would realise.

3 ms·

Citing tiobe.com: "The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming la

by the5avage 6y ago

nineteen999 6y ago
> you should have very good reasons to use it when "starting to build a new software system". And three of those very good reasons are: 1) you're writing a library and you'd like to make it usable from a number of other languages as well, the most popular of which are at least partially implemented in C or C++ themselves to some degree, eg. Java, Python, Perl, Ruby, Haskell etc. Writing said library in C (in particular) makes the library much more accessible from those languages. 2) the platform you're writing for is partially if not largely written in C or C++, the most popular of which are Windows, MacOS, Linux etc. So the toolchain/runtimes used to build the systems are already supported, extremely mature and well tested. 3) the platform you're writing for is especially space constrained (eg. embedded Linux), also fits the criteria for (2) above, and where performance may also be a factor due to reduced CPU/bus speed, availability of RAM and storage. For every interpreter or JIT compiler you want to add to those kind of systems for a higher level language, you can normally fit a larger number of C or C++ programs to implement your device's required functionality. There is far more years of effort required yet to overcome the inertia of the above than the average HN webdev would realise.