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Honest question with no bad intent: Do you really think the "C community" as a whole will accept ANY syntax changes to the language? From my experience I woul

by sai_c 6y ago

Honest question with no bad intent: Do you really think the "C community" as a whole will accept ANY syntax changes to the language? From my experience I would say no. I think it would be "easier" to force tools on them than any syntax change (even if really really minor).

pjmlp 6y ago
What matters is WG14.
- jstarks 6y ago
  Tell that to Annex K... Getting something into the spec isn't enough.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    Indeed, but getting into the spec is the first step to matter at all. And you can get Annex K, on Windows. On the other hand, exactly because of the way some C developers are against anything that helps security, is why Microsoft, Google, Oracle, ARM, Apple are all pursuing projects to have hardware memory tagging. On Solaris SPARC, it already doesn't matter what those more religious developers think about bounds checking and similar issues.
Animats 6y ago
Do you really think the "C community" as a whole will accept ANY syntax changes to the language? No. That's why I didn't push on this. I have some disagreements with the design of Rust, but it's a big step forward.
- johnisgood 6y ago
  Why not just Ada/SPARK? Rust and its syntax I believe is troublesome (heavy use of symbols being the major reason, e.g. in Rust it is completely normal to have 6 symbols next to each other). I often look at some code written in Rust and I cannot tell what it is supposed to do, it is way too hidden from me. It is almost akin to reading Perl. Reading someone else's code written in Ada/SPARK is not a problem, even without knowing much about the language. Mind you, Ada/SPARK has been out there for quite some time now, and it has been a "big step forward" of what people were unaware, unfortunately. Only if Ada/SPARK got the hype of Rust... there would not be much of a need for Rust. Ada/SPARK would have an ideal ecosystem, perhaps even another compiler, and so on.

by sai_c 6y ago

pjmlp 6y ago

What matters is WG14.

jstarks 6y ago
Tell that to Annex K... Getting something into the spec isn't enough.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Indeed, but getting into the spec is the first step to matter at all. And you can get Annex K, on Windows. On the other hand, exactly because of the way some C developers are against anything that helps security, is why Microsoft, Google, Oracle, ARM, Apple are all pursuing projects to have hardware memory tagging. On Solaris SPARC, it already doesn't matter what those more religious developers think about bounds checking and similar issues.

Animats 6y ago

Do you really think the "C community" as a whole will accept ANY syntax changes to the language? No. That's why I didn't push on this. I have some disagreements with the design of Rust, but it's a big step forward.

johnisgood 6y ago
Why not just Ada/SPARK? Rust and its syntax I believe is troublesome (heavy use of symbols being the major reason, e.g. in Rust it is completely normal to have 6 symbols next to each other). I often look at some code written in Rust and I cannot tell what it is supposed to do, it is way too hidden from me. It is almost akin to reading Perl. Reading someone else's code written in Ada/SPARK is not a problem, even without knowing much about the language. Mind you, Ada/SPARK has been out there for quite some time now, and it has been a "big step forward" of what people were unaware, unfortunately. Only if Ada/SPARK got the hype of Rust... there would not be much of a need for Rust. Ada/SPARK would have an ideal ecosystem, perhaps even another compiler, and so on.