4 ms·

This is irrelevant, if you give F1 racing car to an enthusiastic casual driver, you will get a wracked car and few dead in matter of hours. And should I remembe

by stiray 6y ago

This is irrelevant, if you give F1 racing car to an enthusiastic casual driver, you will get a wracked car and few dead in matter of hours. And should I remember you how many exploits we had due to simple sql injection? The last buffer overrun, stack overflow, that I did was like 5 years back and wasn't remotely exploitable. But I agree that not making stupid mistakes takes years to master (in my case 20+). The problem is not in exploits, the problem is in price of people having enough knowledge to not do stupid mistakes and every company wants developer that pays him nothing (or as little as possible) and gets everything or close to it (open source(tm); I want to build a house. I am still searching for an idiot that would make it for "recognition"). And as such they search for most fool proof technology where they could replace expensive and knowledgeable developers with, ideally, street bums that would work for food. And most of the software we are using today is like that: made from street bums. The difference between 1990s software and today is too obvious to not notice the difference, even the "great breakthroughs" and new hypes are just xeroxing what we already had.

varjag 6y ago
Formula 1 is on the bleeding edge of technology, which C is resolutely not. If you're really into car analogies a better one would be racing a Ford T, which is indeed just as unsafe. (No offense, doing a fair bit of C work myself)
- stiray 6y ago
  You are doing an unfair comparing of c/c++ with the availability of 3rd party libraries. There is just nothing wrong with c/c++. But you cant press alt+enter to get a third party library. And this is the only disadvantage for someone that is able to do c or c++. C, CAN be a bleading edge. Depends on who is using it., based on a simple fact that there is nothing you cant do. Except for the amount of money the companies need to pay for skilled c/c++ developer against the <name your poison> developer. I think that in contrast of common belief, the difference in languages has nothing to do with benchmarks. But it has everything to do with price/performance. And performance is not important today (`I'll just start another "cloud" instance whatever the cost`). So we are getting to the price. 10 monkeys for the price of one "real" developer. Why? I was reluctant to use java/c# software due to a fact that it was mostly a crap (and still is). Now I am forced to use it as there are no alternatives. The software is just another thing where the quality is non relevant to the earning. So we eat shit.
  - tralarpa 6y ago
    Wait, we can also do that kind of discussion in the opposite direction: <dont_take_this_too_serious> I think that most C programmers are just programming monkeys. People who enjoy solving sudokus^H^H^H^H^H^H^H pointer arithmetics and format string riddles and think that incrementing a variable in the middle of a statement is the best thing since sliced bread. Programmers, who do not have the necessary skills to become engineers - the latters needed to build modern systems. I think it's good that languages like C exist, so we can keep those people busy and let the more capable people work on what makes the real difference when it comes to robustness, performance, and integrity: algorithms, data structures, and software architecture. Things that require abstract thinking beyond "Where do I store my pointer so I don't forget to free that struct later?". </dont_take_this_too_serious>
    - stiray 6y ago
      /* I have noticed people are downvoting. Face the reality, it is not my fault the world is as it is (but it is our fault if it stays like that). Dont shoot the messenger, this is something that all developers, regardless of language should be aware of. */ Sure and I agree. The companies have tried to use the monkeys for C development, but it didn't work. There is just too much to be aware of. All the next goals were to find a technology that would still keep "low" paid monkeys but prevent them doing stupid mistakes and train them as fast as possible to produce some results, whatever the results were. And we got the winners that we today call java, js, c#, ruby, php, python,... and the devices that are using extremely capable cpus with vast amounts of memory and "diskspace" to produce inferior results. It is not the point that any of those languages is faster (I love those benchmarks comparing speed of language that is written in c/c++ with c/c++), that any of those is better. The point is that they allow companies to pay less to the developers for the same effect with a loss on speed, memory and all the other handy dandy things that can be bought on (and dumped to) consumer side. It was never about speed, memory footprint, syntax. It was always about paying software developer the least amount possible. And we actually helped, open source(tm) anyone? Or in other words, working for free for no benefit but dubious recognition that no one but ourselves care about? I wonder what is any other branch of industry that relies so heavily on recognition instead of payment. As I have mentioned, I want to build a house, please recommend to me anyone prepared to build it for free for "recognition" instead of payment... ... No?... So we are the only ones THAT stupid?

by stiray 6y ago

varjag 6y ago

Formula 1 is on the bleeding edge of technology, which C is resolutely not. If you're really into car analogies a better one would be racing a Ford T, which is indeed just as unsafe. (No offense, doing a fair bit of C work myself)

stiray 6y ago
You are doing an unfair comparing of c/c++ with the availability of 3rd party libraries. There is just nothing wrong with c/c++. But you cant press alt+enter to get a third party library. And this is the only disadvantage for someone that is able to do c or c++. C, CAN be a bleading edge. Depends on who is using it., based on a simple fact that there is nothing you cant do. Except for the amount of money the companies need to pay for skilled c/c++ developer against the <name your poison> developer. I think that in contrast of common belief, the difference in languages has nothing to do with benchmarks. But it has everything to do with price/performance. And performance is not important today (`I'll just start another "cloud" instance whatever the cost`). So we are getting to the price. 10 monkeys for the price of one "real" developer. Why? I was reluctant to use java/c# software due to a fact that it was mostly a crap (and still is). Now I am forced to use it as there are no alternatives. The software is just another thing where the quality is non relevant to the earning. So we eat shit.
- tralarpa 6y ago
  Wait, we can also do that kind of discussion in the opposite direction: <dont_take_this_too_serious> I think that most C programmers are just programming monkeys. People who enjoy solving sudokus^H^H^H^H^H^H^H pointer arithmetics and format string riddles and think that incrementing a variable in the middle of a statement is the best thing since sliced bread. Programmers, who do not have the necessary skills to become engineers - the latters needed to build modern systems. I think it's good that languages like C exist, so we can keep those people busy and let the more capable people work on what makes the real difference when it comes to robustness, performance, and integrity: algorithms, data structures, and software architecture. Things that require abstract thinking beyond "Where do I store my pointer so I don't forget to free that struct later?". </dont_take_this_too_serious>
  - stiray 6y ago
    /* I have noticed people are downvoting. Face the reality, it is not my fault the world is as it is (but it is our fault if it stays like that). Dont shoot the messenger, this is something that all developers, regardless of language should be aware of. */ Sure and I agree. The companies have tried to use the monkeys for C development, but it didn't work. There is just too much to be aware of. All the next goals were to find a technology that would still keep "low" paid monkeys but prevent them doing stupid mistakes and train them as fast as possible to produce some results, whatever the results were. And we got the winners that we today call java, js, c#, ruby, php, python,... and the devices that are using extremely capable cpus with vast amounts of memory and "diskspace" to produce inferior results. It is not the point that any of those languages is faster (I love those benchmarks comparing speed of language that is written in c/c++ with c/c++), that any of those is better. The point is that they allow companies to pay less to the developers for the same effect with a loss on speed, memory and all the other handy dandy things that can be bought on (and dumped to) consumer side. It was never about speed, memory footprint, syntax. It was always about paying software developer the least amount possible. And we actually helped, open source(tm) anyone? Or in other words, working for free for no benefit but dubious recognition that no one but ourselves care about? I wonder what is any other branch of industry that relies so heavily on recognition instead of payment. As I have mentioned, I want to build a house, please recommend to me anyone prepared to build it for free for "recognition" instead of payment... ... No?... So we are the only ones THAT stupid?