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How many of your preferred programming languages are written in C? Yes, many self-host, but a considerable number of them don't want the complications that can

• pjmlp 5y ago
  Modern C compilers are written in C++. So much for C's simplicity in writing compilers.
  • shakna 5y ago
    Yes, C can be simple for writing a compiler. [0][1] No, optimisation, on the other hand, is not a simple problem. [0] https://github.com/rui314/8cc https://github.com/rui314/8cc [1] https://github.com/rui314/chibicc https://github.com/rui314/chibicc
    • pjmlp 5y ago
      Naturally it can be simple, it was already a basic language when compared with what 1960's have produced. The evolution of Bootstrapping CPL compiler + a set of basic types.
  • uecker 5y ago
    There are plenty of C compilers written in C. Large compiler suites for C/C++ are usually written in C++. But as a contributor to GCC, I can say that large parts of the code still look very much like C.
    • pjmlp 5y ago
      Plenty of compilers... right. If you cannot compile GCC with a C compiler, it isn't C.
      • uecker 5y ago
        There a couple of open source C compilers TCC, SDCC, tendra, chibicc, ACK, LCC, PCC, etc. and also many commercial ones. It is true that GCC is not written in C anymore, but it is easy to see that the code is still relatively close. I am also myself writing a C compiler in C at the moment and there is no problem at all.
        • pjmlp 5y ago
          How many of those are actually shipping software into production? Quite curious about which commercial C compilers, written in C, are being sold, keeping those companies in business. Every year thousands of CS students write toy C compilers.
          • jstimpfle 5y ago
            It will be hard to agree with you what "production" even means. I have written and shipped at least one compiler/interpreter (written in plain C). The language wasn't an issue at all. (This compiler doesn't have any meaningful optimizations, but I don't see why that should change the game). GCC and Clang aren't "sold" either, nor is MSVC really. I have never contributed to GCC, but as a fact I have visited plenty of files from its source code, and so far haven't encountered any meaningful use of C++ that couldn't easily be rewritten in plain C. The overwhelming majority of the code would probably compile as C without changes. I'm sure that there are far more meaningful "problems" with the architecture of a compiler written in C that are not the implementation language. For example, GCC is a pain to build (IIRC when I tried many years ago, I gave up).
      • jstimpfle 5y ago
        Trying to win a pointless argument based on pedantic logic that misses the point.
        • pjmlp 5y ago
          Usually the typical answer when facts aren't appealing, the other way around apparently being pedantic matters.
          • jstimpfle 5y ago
            Obviously one should always argue to the point instead of picking an interpretation that is easy to refute using "logic".