4 ms·

Re: cosmopolitan libc: As cool as it is, I don't think the barrier to widespread adoption of C as a greenfield language for application development was ever tha

by d3nj4l 5y ago

Re: cosmopolitan libc: As cool as it is, I don't think the barrier to widespread adoption of C as a greenfield language for application development was ever that things didn't run cross-platform, it was, you know, the footguns and complexity of building anything significant in C.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I don't know how old you are, but at 57 and having been "computing" for 35 years, I'd say that this is wrong, on two levels. 1. C has been the green field language for application for decades. 2. The major obstacle is precisely cross-platform development; without a fairly thick layer to abstract away the OS API/platform, it's very difficult. In addition to those two, there's the detail that lots of development projects want in-browser capabilities, and that essentially rules out compiled languages (ignoring the developing options for webasm, even though they still do not take it as far as native C/C++).
- dannyw 5y ago
  I'm a developer in my mid 20s with a few friends who are software engineers. None of them worked with C for years. The jobs here are JavaScript, Java, Python, etc.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    Depends on where you live I guess ? When I was in Bordeaux there were almost as many c/c++ jobs than java/php/js jobs, and more than Python jobs.
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    The modern reality is that most, 99.99%, of all software does not need the performance nor engineering flexibility that is C/C++. couple that with multiple generations of new developers being told "memory management is too hard for your poor little brains" and similar bullshit - nowadays it is rare to find a young developer that is not downright afraid of C/C++. Plus, the greybeard C/C++ guru is not at all helpful in many locations, having been corporate abused for decades at this point...

4 ms·

Re: cosmopolitan libc: As cool as it is, I don't think the barrier to widespread adoption of C as a greenfield language for application development was ever tha

by d3nj4l 5y ago

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
I don't know how old you are, but at 57 and having been "computing" for 35 years, I'd say that this is wrong, on two levels. 1. C has been the green field language for application for decades. 2. The major obstacle is precisely cross-platform development; without a fairly thick layer to abstract away the OS API/platform, it's very difficult. In addition to those two, there's the detail that lots of development projects want in-browser capabilities, and that essentially rules out compiled languages (ignoring the developing options for webasm, even though they still do not take it as far as native C/C++).
- dannyw 5y ago
  I'm a developer in my mid 20s with a few friends who are software engineers. None of them worked with C for years. The jobs here are JavaScript, Java, Python, etc.
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    Depends on where you live I guess ? When I was in Bordeaux there were almost as many c/c++ jobs than java/php/js jobs, and more than Python jobs.
  - bsenftner 5y ago
    The modern reality is that most, 99.99%, of all software does not need the performance nor engineering flexibility that is C/C++. couple that with multiple generations of new developers being told "memory management is too hard for your poor little brains" and similar bullshit - nowadays it is rare to find a young developer that is not downright afraid of C/C++. Plus, the greybeard C/C++ guru is not at all helpful in many locations, having been corporate abused for decades at this point...