5 ms·

> these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rus

by skohan 5y ago

> these languages and runtimes are indeed much safer, and also much more productive than C. You can even still get the same amount of low-level control with Rust. Rust is not a C analog. The whole value proposition of C is simplicity, and Rust is anything but simple. >> but perhaps in another decade or so, you might not be allowed to program in 'unsafe' languages on all other mainstream platforms, unless you register for a driver/system developer license or something, or not even that. > Lunacy. What is the evidence for this? Look at a platform like Apple. Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. >> The tinkerer/hacker ethos is disappearing slowly from PCs. >It was only ever there in the first place with a tiny minority of users, and that minority seems as committed to their craft as they've ever been. What do you mean? In early PC's, the way you ran software was to copy code from a magazine and compile and run it on your workstation. Being a PC user at all meant being a tinkerer/hacker a few decades ago.

catblast01 5y ago
> In early PC's, the way you ran software was to copy code from a magazine and compile and run it on your workstation. Being a PC user at all meant being a tinkerer/hacker a few decades ago. Bullshit. Except for the brief period of time when the Altair was the only thing going on in the Micro space… the Apple II, Atari 800, IBM PC and TRS-80 amongst others were marketed in the late 70s/early 80s with off the shelf, ready to run software. While copying code out of a magazine was something you could do, it wasn’t even the common case then. > Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. I have not experienced this. Yes Mac OS makes it harder to run random stuff downloaded from the internet, but Llvm, clang, cmake, python from the command line works the same as they always have (you are fetishizing code that is entered yourself after all).
- skohan 5y ago
  The new windows does not even run on hardware which doesn't have TMP. You really don't see signs that computers are getting more closed?
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    PC was an accident caused by IBM's failure to put Compaq into line. All other platforms were hardly any different from Apple, in fact Apple is just like they always have been
bfrog 5y ago
Rust is arguably simpler than C++ to comprehend, and sure, more complex than simple C. But the complexity argument is overblown.
- skohan 5y ago
  I didn't say anything about C++. Rust is a very complex language. You can argue about whether it's more or less complex than C++, but it's certainly on that end of the spectrum. C is way on the other end. That's not a value judgement of Rust, just an observation.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > C is way on the other end. Rust is complex, but I think it’s honest in its complexity: it straddles programmers with lifetime management in exchange for better optimizations (alias analysis is a pain in C!) and memory safety. This is in contrast to C: it’s very easy to write C that compiles, but very difficult to fully evaluate its correctness. Part of that is the extraordinary complexity of the C abstract machine, combined with its leakiness: writing correct C requires you to understand both your ISA’s memory model and the set of constraints inconsistently layered on it by C. That’s a kind of pernicious complexity that Rust doesn’t have.
    - skohan 5y ago
      There is something true in what you are saying, but I still think the difference in complexity between Rust and C has much more to do with the very different goals of the languages rather than C just hiding complexity from the programmer. Rust targets a much higher level of abstraction than C. The machine itself is at arms-length, and you are mostly thinking in terms of an abstract type system and borrow checker rather than a CPU and memory system. A lot of rust programming is declarative, and a lot of the complexity comes from finding the right way to express your intent to the compiler through the various systems of the language. The tradeoff for that complexity is that you get to write programs with very strong safety guarantees, correctness benefits, and low performance overhead. C is about having simple, imperative control over the computer hardware. With C you are thinking in terms of the CPU and the memory system, you are mostly just telling the computer exactly what you want it to do. C definitely does have some failings: for instance as you allude to, C doesn't ensure that all failure modes are encoded in the function signature, so it's not really possible to audit a C program for correctness by reading the source alone, the way you can almost do with Rust. But that doesn't mean that the level of complexity which comes with Rust is necessary to fix the issues with C. Zig is a good example of trying to plug some of C's holes without increasing the level of abstraction.
jolux 5y ago
> Rust is not a C analog. The whole value proposition of C is simplicity, and Rust is anything but simple. I would say the value proposition is control and performance, and more pragmatically ubiquity. If the value proposition were simplicity, why aren't C programmers writing Lisp instead? If it's simplicity and control, why aren't they writing assembly? At this point, C is little more than a bad abstraction that people are nostalgic for. > Look at a platform like Apple. Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. No, it doesn't. It has not gotten harder to run arbitrary code. It has gotten harder for developers to distribute unsigned applications. I've been using Macs for 10 years and my setup process throughout that whole time has been: xcode-select --install, install Homebrew, get on with my life. The OS never interferes with my programming beyond that.
- nec4b 5y ago
  > I would say the value proposition is control and performance, and more pragmatically ubiquity. If the value proposition were simplicity, why aren't C programmers writing Lisp instead? If it's simplicity and control, why aren't they writing assembly? At this point, C is little more than a bad abstraction that people are nostalgic for. Because it is hard model hardware in idiomatic Lisp and Assembly in not portable and not very productive. C is somewhat simple, portable, productive and fast language for writing code that is as close to a machine without having to use Assembly. It can be easily combined with Assembly when needed. Barring C++ it has the biggest tooling support of any other language available.
  - skohan 5y ago
    I agree - C is a sweet-spot language. It shows its age in certain ways, but it remains a relevant language 50 years after its inception because it strikes a very pragmatic balance between being simple and easy to understand, and in being a fairly thin abstraction over the hardware.
neilparikh 5y ago
> Look at a platform like Apple. Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. The original claim was that "you might not be allowed to program in 'unsafe' languages on all other mainstream platforms". But Apple restrictions don't distinguish between safe and unsafe languages, they just restrict all arbitrary code, so this is not an example of the point being made, but rather an orthogonal issue.
- skohan 5y ago
  I was responding to the broader point that security is used as justification for making systems less accessible to programmers. Apple doesn't distinguish between safe and unsafe languages for now, but it's not impossible to imagine this becoming a restriction in the future, given the broader trend.

by skohan 5y ago

catblast01 5y ago

> In early PC's, the way you ran software was to copy code from a magazine and compile and run it on your workstation. Being a PC user at all meant being a tinkerer/hacker a few decades ago. Bullshit. Except for the brief period of time when the Altair was the only thing going on in the Micro space… the Apple II, Atari 800, IBM PC and TRS-80 amongst others were marketed in the late 70s/early 80s with off the shelf, ready to run software. While copying code out of a magazine was something you could do, it wasn’t even the common case then. > Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. I have not experienced this. Yes Mac OS makes it harder to run random stuff downloaded from the internet, but Llvm, clang, cmake, python from the command line works the same as they always have (you are fetishizing code that is entered yourself after all).

skohan 5y ago
The new windows does not even run on hardware which doesn't have TMP. You really don't see signs that computers are getting more closed?
- pjmlp 5y ago
  PC was an accident caused by IBM's failure to put Compaq into line. All other platforms were hardly any different from Apple, in fact Apple is just like they always have been

bfrog 5y ago

Rust is arguably simpler than C++ to comprehend, and sure, more complex than simple C. But the complexity argument is overblown.

skohan 5y ago
I didn't say anything about C++. Rust is a very complex language. You can argue about whether it's more or less complex than C++, but it's certainly on that end of the spectrum. C is way on the other end. That's not a value judgement of Rust, just an observation.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > C is way on the other end. Rust is complex, but I think it’s honest in its complexity: it straddles programmers with lifetime management in exchange for better optimizations (alias analysis is a pain in C!) and memory safety. This is in contrast to C: it’s very easy to write C that compiles, but very difficult to fully evaluate its correctness. Part of that is the extraordinary complexity of the C abstract machine, combined with its leakiness: writing correct C requires you to understand both your ISA’s memory model and the set of constraints inconsistently layered on it by C. That’s a kind of pernicious complexity that Rust doesn’t have.
  - skohan 5y ago
    There is something true in what you are saying, but I still think the difference in complexity between Rust and C has much more to do with the very different goals of the languages rather than C just hiding complexity from the programmer. Rust targets a much higher level of abstraction than C. The machine itself is at arms-length, and you are mostly thinking in terms of an abstract type system and borrow checker rather than a CPU and memory system. A lot of rust programming is declarative, and a lot of the complexity comes from finding the right way to express your intent to the compiler through the various systems of the language. The tradeoff for that complexity is that you get to write programs with very strong safety guarantees, correctness benefits, and low performance overhead. C is about having simple, imperative control over the computer hardware. With C you are thinking in terms of the CPU and the memory system, you are mostly just telling the computer exactly what you want it to do. C definitely does have some failings: for instance as you allude to, C doesn't ensure that all failure modes are encoded in the function signature, so it's not really possible to audit a C program for correctness by reading the source alone, the way you can almost do with Rust. But that doesn't mean that the level of complexity which comes with Rust is necessary to fix the issues with C. Zig is a good example of trying to plug some of C's holes without increasing the level of abstraction.

jolux 5y ago

> Rust is not a C analog. The whole value proposition of C is simplicity, and Rust is anything but simple. I would say the value proposition is control and performance, and more pragmatically ubiquity. If the value proposition were simplicity, why aren't C programmers writing Lisp instead? If it's simplicity and control, why aren't they writing assembly? At this point, C is little more than a bad abstraction that people are nostalgic for. > Look at a platform like Apple. Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. No, it doesn't. It has not gotten harder to run arbitrary code. It has gotten harder for developers to distribute unsigned applications. I've been using Macs for 10 years and my setup process throughout that whole time has been: xcode-select --install, install Homebrew, get on with my life. The OS never interferes with my programming beyond that.

nec4b 5y ago
> I would say the value proposition is control and performance, and more pragmatically ubiquity. If the value proposition were simplicity, why aren't C programmers writing Lisp instead? If it's simplicity and control, why aren't they writing assembly? At this point, C is little more than a bad abstraction that people are nostalgic for. Because it is hard model hardware in idiomatic Lisp and Assembly in not portable and not very productive. C is somewhat simple, portable, productive and fast language for writing code that is as close to a machine without having to use Assembly. It can be easily combined with Assembly when needed. Barring C++ it has the biggest tooling support of any other language available.
- skohan 5y ago
  I agree - C is a sweet-spot language. It shows its age in certain ways, but it remains a relevant language 50 years after its inception because it strikes a very pragmatic balance between being simple and easy to understand, and in being a fairly thin abstraction over the hardware.

neilparikh 5y ago

> Look at a platform like Apple. Every release makes it harder to run arbitrary code. The original claim was that "you might not be allowed to program in 'unsafe' languages on all other mainstream platforms". But Apple restrictions don't distinguish between safe and unsafe languages, they just restrict all arbitrary code, so this is not an example of the point being made, but rather an orthogonal issue.

skohan 5y ago
I was responding to the broader point that security is used as justification for making systems less accessible to programmers. Apple doesn't distinguish between safe and unsafe languages for now, but it's not impossible to imagine this becoming a restriction in the future, given the broader trend.